
EV.WMP.LEWIS.D.D 



■ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



dljjap. Ckpijrigfit l^n. 

Shelf. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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I 6 



sns^£s{y 



The Life to Come. 



BY \/ 

The Reverend William P. Lewis, D.D. 

Presbyter of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, 






m 8 1896) ^ 



->/ 



PHILADELPHIA : 
George W. Jacobs & Company, 

103 SOUTH 15TH STREET. 

1896 



N= 



Copyright, 1896, 
By Rev; Wm. P. Lewis, D. D. 



The Library 
of Congress 

washington 



READER 



KINDLY remember that this little Book, 
which you can read through in two 
hours, has taken the author a life- 
time to write. 

He may be criticised for the frequency 
of quotations. They are the result of 
study and discrimination, and have cost 
almost as much labor as the same amount 
of original matter would have done. Ju- 
dicious quotation is a sort of secondary 
composition. 

His effort is, to help you to think : not 
to do your thinking for 3 r ou. 

He may be asked, " Why write on a 
subject on which so much has been al- 
ready said ? " His answer is : Because he 
has something to say, which he is not 
aware that anyone else has said. But for 
this, he would not have written at all. 

3 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Case Stated 7 

CHAPTER II. 
Historical Notes 35 

CHAPTER III. 
The Oppositions of Scripture 71 

CHAPTER IV. 
Propositions or Conclusions 85 



THE LIFE TO COME. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE CASE STATED. 

In the Reminiscences of Bishop Clark, we read as 
follows : "I once told the Rev. Horace Bushnell I 
thought of preaching on a topic, which, forty years 
ago, we had not learned to handle as intelligently as 
we do now ; and I shall never forget how he brought 
down his hand, and said, " I would not preach on 
thatSubjectforTen Thousand Dollars." Notthathe 
was afraid to do it ; but he thought the time had 
not come, for its thorough ventilation : and if he 
once threw open the doors of his mind, it must be 
to let the wind circulate freely." The Bishop does 
not tell us what the subject was ; but when we 
reflect that it was just about the time of Maurice's 
expulsion from King's College, when this conversa- 
tion took place, is it unlikely that the subject which 
the great Congregationalist Divine refused to touch, 
was, — the Future of Sin ? 

Not more truly could the Jews say, ' ' Forty and 
six years was this Temple in building," than I can 
say, Thirty years has this Book been in writing. 
For years, this topic has appeared to me the most 

(7) 



8 THE UEE TO COME. 

momentous of what is dryly called, "Systematic 
divinity." It comes up at many a funeral. It 
touches the fate of multitudes departed this life, who 
are far dearer to the survivors than life itself. It is 
raised by the news of every sudden, accidental, 
wholesale death. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sis- 
ters, husbands, wives, are comforted t or depressed 
according to the way in which it is treated. Can we 
help inquiring — "What do we know about it? 
What has God said about it ? Or (what is equally 
important), What has He ?wt said about it?" For 
ignorance is negative knowledge. 

A half century ago, the positions generally held 
as necessary to orthodoxy were these : i . That all 
the saving work of God upon human souls, ceased 
with this life. 2. That the souls of those who died 
unsaved were doomed at the moment of death to 
everlasting punishment, meaning by that endless 
penal torment, whether actively inflicted by God, or 
arising out of the man's own self. The Protestant 
theology held, and it was the doctrine of the Book 
of Homilies of the English Reformation, as I shall 
hereafter notice, that such souls went " straight to 
Hell," that is, to endless torture. This view was 
afterwards modified, so as to hold that these lost 
souls were detained in Hades, the unseen world, 
"the place of departed spirits," till the Day of 
Judgment ; but in a different part of that place 



the: case; stated. 9 

from the souls of the righteous. At the last day 
they are to be brought up to receive the sentence 
of Endless Condemnation ; a sentence, however, 
which was potentially passed at death. The fate of 
every man was stereotyped at that hour. 

Now these tenets which, although expressing the 
' ' popular ' ' ( !) theology, have been, as will be shown, 
challenged by a long line of deep thinkers in the 
Church, whose orthodoxy has never been attacked, 
have been seriously and increasingly questioned dur- 
ing the last fifty years. These are some of the 
grounds : 

i. They are not contained in the Nicene Creed, 
and "that which is commonly called the Apostles' 
Creed," which, according to Article VIII, of the 39, 
ought thoroughly to be received and believed.* The 
Statute 1 KHz. I: Sec. 36, enacts that "only that 
shall be adjudged to be heresie, which shall have 
heretofore been determined, ordered and adjudged to 
be heresie by the authority of the Canonical Scrip- 
tures, or by the first four General Councils, or any of 
them, or by any other General Council, wherein the 
same was declared heresie by the express and plain 
words, of the said Canonical Scriptures ; or such as 
shall hereafter be ordered, judged or determined to 



* Of course, in the corresponding anicle of the Church of England the Atha- 
nasian Creed is added. The difference is of little consequence, since by the 
common consent of English Theologians of the present day, the damnatory 
clauses are explained away. They have saved charity at the expense of logic. 



lO THE LIFE TO COME. 

be heresie, by the High Court of Parliament of this 
Realm, with the assent of the Clergy in their Con- 
vocation." 

This Declaration of Faith, we have inherited 
from the Mother Church, and it has never been 
altered.* By "the Authority of the Canonical 
Scriptures" is not meant the interpretation which 
any one man may please to put upon them ; but an 
official interpretation. The Lambeth Conference 
might have put such meaning upon them. Although 
not Ecumenical, it would be binding on the Anglican 
Communion. 

The first four General Councils are entirely silent 
upon the subject. No other General Council has 
declared the denial of the above positions to be heresy, 
by the express and plain words of the said Canonical 
Scriptures, that is, by citing in words, the passages 
of Scripture which uphold them.f And the "Articles 



* The Preface to the Prayer Book says " this Church is far from intending to 
depart from the Church of England, in any essential point, of doctrine, discipline 
or worship, or further than local circumstances require. Local circumstances, 
indeed, required to drop the provisions relating to Parliament and Convocation; 
but we should be departing from the Church of England, in an essential point of 
doctrine if we altered the test of' heresie.' " 

fin regard to the silence of the General Councils, I would quote the words of 
the Rev. H. H. Jeaffreson, in his essay on the Teaching of Origen, and his 
supposed condemnation by the Fifth General Council. (553)- It is appended to 
" Our Catholic Inheritance in the Larger Hope," by the Rev Alfred Gurney 
(p. 79). " I would entreat my readers to consider the significance of this silence 
of the Church's Councils. The doctrine of Restitution was pressed upon the 
Church's notice all through the period of the General Councils : — pressed upon 
it in a crude and extreme form, for so I must describe the doctrine of Origen — 
pressed upon it from many sides, and by theologians of eminence, and yet the 
Church (whom we believe to be the organ of the Holy Spirit), was restrained 



THE CASK STATKD. II 

agreed upon by the Archbishops and Bishops of both 
Provinces, and the whole Clergy, in the Convoca- 
tion holden at London, in the year 1562," are en- 
tirely silent on the subject. Nor is this all. An 
article which had been passed at a previous Convo- 
cation, condemning the tenet, that "all men shall 
be saved at the length," was omitted in this final 
Revision. And no utterance of the Anglo-American 
Church, has disturbed the subject. 

Whatever may have been the drift of thought, 
that does not make it Church doctrine. Men take 
up certain views, simply because those before them 
held, and those around them hold, those views. 
There is, and always has been a strong tendency 
with some Theologians, and with Parties in the 
Church, to harden opinion, into dog-ma, and then to 
insist upon the reception of that dogma, as a test of 
orthodoxy. This tendency needs to be carefully 
watched. It is pretty sure to succeed partially, and 
for a time, in spite of all watching : and the result 



from any condemnation of that doctrine. The Silence of the Holy Ghost is no 
less venerable than His Speech. We must be as jealous against addition to His 
teaching, as against diminutions from it. It is mere rationalism to say that a 
doctrine of such moment must have been decided. God, who was pleased lo 
leave for centuries unrevealed, His Own Tri-unity, His Method of Redemption, 
His Merciful designs for the heathen, may not improbably have left His 
Church without a doctrine de fidt , upon the future of the lost. His method 
seems to have been, not to define every possible doctrine ; but to lay down cer- 
tain ruling truths, by the help of which the Church and her children, should be 
guided in their further inquiries; where the Church has been silent it may be our 
duty to be silent too ; it cannot be our duty, to erect our own conclusions, how- 
ever probable, into articles of faith." 



12 THE LIFE TO COME. 

is dangerous — He is as much a Defender of the 
Faith, who resists this tendency as he who cham- 
pions Articles which are de fide. The consensus of 
opinion is often worth nothing more than the con- 
sensus of the copies of a printed book. They have 
all been struck off from the same types. 

2. It is urged, that there are multitudes, and 
many of them, by no means to be found among the 
outcast and degraded, who have never had, in this 
life, what can be fairly called, a ' ' probation. ' ' 
You might as well talk of the probation of a stu- 
dent, under an examination which is to determine 
his whole career, who has been deprived of the use 
of books, has wretched stationery, is suffering 
from a splitting headache, has had incompetent 
teachers, and must write his answers in the midst 
of a distracting din. 

3. This theory reduces the state between death 
and resurrection, in which the great, and in every 
generation, increasing majority of the human race 
is to be found (if, in classical times abiit ad 
plures was the description of one who had just died, 
how much truer is it now) to a vast region of iner- 
tia and laziness, when there is neither employment 
nor improvement. On the contrary, it is natural 
to suppose, that it is a sphere of intense activity, 
where the work of the ministry, begun on Earth, 
shall go on, free from the obstacles, which impeded 



THE CASE STATED. 1 3 

it here. Imagine S. Paul whiling away his time, 
doing nothing. 

For once, the veil has been lifted, and light 
thrown upon that which is behind it. The revela- 
tion may be rendered thus : " For even Christ suf- 
fered once for all, on account of sins, the just on 
behalf of the unjust, that He might bring us to 
God : being put to death in flesh, but receiving 
fresh life in the Spirit : in which (Spirit) going on 
a journey, He acted as Herald, even to the spirits 
in prison : who then were disobedient, when once 
the long-suffering of God, waited in the days of 
Noah, while the ark was preparing." This is to 
be taken in connection with what shortly follows : 
' ' For, to this end were glad tidings announced even 
to dead men ; that they might be judged according 
to men in the flesh : but live according to God in 
the Spirit." (i S. Peter iii: 18-20; iv: 6). 

Ingenious have been the attempts to explain 
these words away. And if this is not handling the 
Word of God deceitfully, what is ? To those who 
are willing to come to it, as if the)^ had never heard 
it before, these points are made : — 

(a) S. Peter here relates a fact, which, of course, 
he had learned from his Lord, with the same calm- 
ness and simplicity, with which any of the Evan- 
gelists detail any teaching of our L,ord, or any fact 
of His L,ife. 



14 THE LIFE TO COME. 

(d) The last thing we heard of these spirits in 
prison, when they were on earth, was, that they 
were disobedient ; and it is implied, that, in this 
state of disobedience, they left the world. 

(V) They were disobedient, in spite of having the 
advantage of Noah's preaching. Not only was 
there the practical warning of the Ark preparing, 
before their eyes, which S. Peter implies was a 
preaching by action ("which sometime were dis- 
obedient, while the ark was a preparing"), but we 
are told (2 S. Peter ii: 5) that Noah was "a 
preacher of righteousness :" and that the flood was 
brought in "upon the world of the ungodly." 
They were far more blameworthy than the heathen, 
who never have heard the sound of the preacher's 
voice. 

(<sT) In accordance with this, when Our Lord is said 
to have preached "Even to the spirits in prison," 
which word is ignored in our translation, it is implied, 
that they were the most unlikely and unfavorable 
congregation possible. "Judged according to men 
in the flesh," this was true : but the word "Some- 
time were disobedient," implies that their imprison- 
ment "had brought them to a better frame of mind; 
and that they were prepared for receiving the Glad 
Tidings." 

(e) The word translated "prison," occurs thirty- 
eight times in the New Testament, in the undoubted 



THE CASE STATED. 1 5 

sense of a prison, and not once in that of a place of 
protection. 

(/) " Now, Ihrough Christ, the intermediate state 
of the departed has experienced a movement, nay, a 
transformation, through the manifestation of His 
Person, and His Work. The ceasing of this preach- 
ing begun by Christ, with His preaching at that 
time, is neither recorded, nor reasonably to be sup- 
posed. The Ancient Church looked upon the 
preaching on behalf of the departed, as to be con- 
tinued through the Apostles." "To confine this 
preaching to the three days of Our Lord's descent 
into the grave, is monstrous." 

(g) If it be said, He only preached to the Spirits in 
prison, but went on no mission to the spirits of the 
dead in general, I answer : His Spirit in Hades was 
subject to human conditions, and limitations. He 
could no more have preached to all the dead, than 
His voice could have reached all Judea, from the 
plateau, on which He preached the Sermon on the 
Mount. This limitation is involved in the word 
naps v9el$, travelling, journeying. He chose the 
congregation which most needed him. The peni- 
tent robber must have attended these ministrations. 
"To-day, shalt thou be with Me, in Paradise." 

If, fifty years ago, a clergyman had given from 
the pulpit this, the obvious explanation of these 
words, in some congregations there would have 



16 THE LIFE TO COME. 

been " no small stir." Very likely a zealous parish- 
ioner would have delated him to the Bishop, with- 
out loss of time ; and some of the Right-Reverend 
Fathers of that day, would have brought the un- 
happy man, within range of the "Canon for the 
Trial of a Clergyman." It is a test, of our loyalty 
to truth, and to the God who is the truth, whether 
we accept, unhesitatingly, what He tells us, fearless 
of the consequences to which it leads, or shrink back 
from it, the moment we see results from it, which 
we do not like. Men had adopted a certain theory 
of the future ; and they at once tried to get rid of 
words, which interfered with that theory. When 
Scripture cannot be fitted to a predetermined thesis, 
the first thing to do is, to get it out of the way. 

4. It is urged, that there are many hindrances to 
the reception of the truth, caused by the fact of 
being "in the body." When death removes these, 
the truth will far more likely be received, than when 
" the motions of sin which were in the flesh," were 
continually thwarting and hindering it. Does God, 
it is asked, cut these opportunities off forever, at 
death ? 

5. There is a moral argument against endless 
torment. If we suppose a crowd of prisoners col- 
lected in one huge jail, left entirely to themselves, 
and to the unhindered effects of their own badness, 
can any one doubt, that they would increase in 



THE CASE STATED. 1 7 

wickedness, with frightful strides ? Or suppose, a 
French Revolution increasing endlessly in horror. 
This contaminating power of herded wickedness, is 
part of the unsolved problem of human punishment. 
Prisoners generally come out — it is an alarming 
fact — worse than they went in. We constantly see 
the paragraph telling of a crime, end, "He was 
only out of prison a few days. ' ' It was Dickens' 
object, amid all the humor of his first work, to show 
the moral injury to the prisoners themselves, arising 
from their being huddled together in the Fleet 
Prison. Now, if there is to be a prison of the 
world, where all the sinners who have ever existed 
in that world are to be shut up immortally, having 
free intercourse with one another, able to corrupt 
one another — if such is the case, are there any 
words to describe, the infinite increase of sin that 
will be brought about ? Can God not only allow, 
but positively decree not only the perpetuation of 
sin, but its increase in geometrical ratio ? Was 
Jonathan Edwards right, after all, when he depicted 
the horrors of the lost with such realistic minute- 
ness, that men and women clung to the front of the 
pews, as if that frail support would keep them out 
of the fiery abyss which he opened at their feet ? 

These questions must be faced. 

Jeremy Taylor is reputed an orthodox Divine. 
It has been said indeed, of him, that he has a strong 



1 8 THE LIFE TO COME. 

leaning to rhetorical many sidedness; and on this 
very subject, is not always consistent with himself. 
Yet he has left these words uncancelled. He is 
expressing his leaning towards the doctrine of anni- 
hilation, and says, "Concerning this doctrine of 
theirs so severe, and yet so moderate, there is less 
to be objected, than against the supposed fancy of 
Origen " (Universalism). " For it is a strange con- 
sideration, to suppose an eternal torment to those 
to whom it was never threatened ; to those who 
never heard of Christ : to those who lived probably 
well" (up to their lights); "to heathen of good 
lives ; to ignorant and untaught people ; to people 
surprised in a single crime ; to men that die young 
in their natural follies, and foolish lusts ; to them 
that fall in a sudden guilty and excessive joy ; to 
all alike, to all infinite and eternal ; even to un- 
warned people ; and that this should be inflicted by 
God, Who infinitely loves His creatures ; who died 
for them ; who pardons easily, and pities readily ; 
who excuses much, and delights in our being 
saved, and would not have us to die, and takes 
little things in exchange for great. It is certain 
that God's mercies are infinite, and it is also 
certain that the matter of eternal torment cannot 
be understood : and when the schoolmen go about 
to reconcile the Divine Justice to that Severity, and 
consider why God punishes Eternally a Temporal 



THE CASE STATED. 1 9 

Sin, or a state of Evil, they speak variously, and 
uncertainly, and unsatisfyingly." 

We may shelter ourselves behind the utterances 
of the English Chrysostom. 

6. The agitations and questions on this Subject 
have kept pace with the growing humanity of the 
age. So long as Parents were content to allow their 
children to pass daily under the rod of a brutal 
Schoolmaster (nor were brutalities confined to boys' 
schools) ; so long as schools of the Dotheboys Hall 
type were allowed to flourish ; so long as the cruelty 
to children in mills and mines, described with such 
horrible fidelity in Cobden's "White Slaves of 
England," went on unmolested; which drew from 
Elizabeth Browning " The Cry of the Children;" 
so long as the Insane were confined in strait- 
jackets, and treated like wild beasts ; so long as 
Imprisonment, for Debts innocently incurred, was 
law ; so long as it was a capital offence to steal 
property of the value of Forty Shillings, while 
Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of 
England, wrote, "It is a melancholy fact, that, of 
the actions which men are liable daily to commit, 
One Hundred and Sixty have been pronounced by 
the Law, to be felony without benefit of clergy, 
or in other words, to be worthy of instant death :" * 



* A reliable historian says that judicial torture was only abolished at the end 
of the last century. 



20 THE LIFE TO COME. 

while all these cruelties were looked upon with 
serene eyes, it was no wonder that man should 
think that ' ' God was altogether such an one as 
himself;" and attribute to Him on a grand scale, 
the like of what was done by himself on a small one- 
We have not by any means gotten rid of all abuses ; 
witness the sweating shops and other iniquities. 
But there is a constant tendency towards humanity 
and justice; relieving the oppressed; caring for 
those in want ; lessening human suffering. An age, 
to which God has given the discovery of anaes- 
thetics, will not long continue to attribute to Him 
conduct which would be brutal in a man. 

I recall two sermons heard in my youth, in which 
this subject was alluded to. In the first, preached 
on an Easter Day, the preacher closed with the 
threat to the Impenitent, as the Message of the Day 
to them, of " Eternal Life in Hell." Now, " Eter- 
nal Life," is, one may say, a technical term, created 
by Our Lord Himself, used principally in the writ- 
ings of S. John to express the timeless Life of God, 
in the soul of man. It cannot mean mere unending 
existence. To speak of Eternal Life in Hell, is a 
contradiction. On the other occasion the text was 
' ' God is Love. ' ' The Preacher tried to reconcile 
the Love of God, with Everlasting Punishment. 
He thought he succeeded by asking triumphantly, 
" Is there anything so Severe as the Punishments of 



the; cask stated. 21 

Iyove?" But this is just what the maintainers of 
Kndtess Torment assert that they are not. If they 
are, there is an end of the matter — cadit quaestio. 

I recollect also the following sentence in a sermon, 
"Do you call that man happy, who, when he lies 
down at night, knows not whether he shall wake in 
eternal torments ? ' ' 

But here, two qualifying thoughts come in : 
The first is this. There must have been an ele- 
ment of truth in these gloomy tenets, which we 
ought by no means to lose sight of. From the 
nature of the case, L,ife is a Probation of a kind that 
cannot be repeated. ' ' The deeds done in the body' ' 
stand out, as those for which we must give account. 
The relationships of life cease with life. As mem- 
bers of a family, as citizens, as entrusted with money 
or any stewardship, when death says " Give an 
account of thy Stewardship, for thou mayest be no 
longer steward," the result is irrevocable. We can- 
not return to Earth, to undo errors, right wrongs, or 
cancel sins. Then, too, a deed done, or a word 
spoken, in this life, is an immortal thing. It has 
become part of the history of the universe. One is 
struck, in reading the literature of the Larger Hope,* 
with this fact, that, instead of being less solemn than 
the views which it displaces it is more so, simply 



* Let me say (as will be shown hereafter) that, in my own mind, the Larger 
Hcpe is not the equivalent of Universalism. 



22 THK lylFE TO COMK. 

because it denies that any sudden and abrupt change 
of character takes place, at the moment of death : 
but, holding that we enter upon life there, with just 
what we take away with us from here, it holds the 
immense importance to our hereafter, of the charac- 
ter with which we leave this world. 

Our other thought is this. Mention has been 
made of a milder and. more humane theology, keep- 
ing pace with a milder and more humane type of 
life. But this mildness may degenerate into soft- 
ness, weakness and condoning of sin. Not only are 
Draconian Criminal Laws abolished ; but there is 
tendency to treat sin as insanity ; and to rob pun- 
ishment of its deterrent character, to pardon flagrant 
criminals, and let them loose upon society from 
some dark motive which will not bear the light ; to 
increase the numbers of wrong doers, by instilling 
the hope that even if they are convicted and pun- 
ished, the sentence will not be carried out. As a 
rule, children are no longer treated harshly, at 
home, in school, or in places where they are em- 
ployed. Yes, but is there not often an over-indul- 
gence in their bringing up ? Are they not shielded 
from every disagreeable experience ? Is there not 
the feeling that amusement must be provided for 
them the whole time ; that their very studies "must 
be sugar-coated ? Is there not a similar danger of 
the pendulum swinging to the other extreme, in 



THE CASK STATED. 23 

regard to the question of the retribution for sin? 
When we consider, for instance, the deep-seated 
and deadly political and social corruption, which 
abound, and the " cauterizing " of the conscience, 
to which such causes lead (and we must not say in 
our hearts, ' ' the former days were better than 
these"), the Christian teacher should indeed pause 
before he "strengthens the hands of the wicked, 
that he should not return from his evil way, by 
promising him life." 

In the old times, ''endless torment" and its 
accessories were dwelt upon. Now, in the pulpit, 
the subject of Future Retribution is rarely touched. 
This is not a healthy reaction. 

Some may criticise the cautiousness of the lan- 
guage of this book ; the stopping short where it 
might seem natural to say more ; the qualification 
of what has been said. But the very mode in which 
Scripture teaches us, is, "in many portions," some 
of them a mere fragment, or hint. An illustration 
comes out of one silence, and departs into another. 
The attempt to map out the world beyond, in either 
of its aspects, has always proved a failure. God 
means that it should. " Inquirers demand certain- 
ties. They clamor for immediate and unequivocal 
answers, doubtless, and overlook the fact that 
Divine Wisdom rarely vouchsafes such. God's 
reserve is vastly more edifying to the docile soul 



24 THE LIFE TO COME. 

than maii's dogmatism. If God's book had had the 
average man for its author, no doubt it would have 
abounded in direct and categoric replies to all 
questions. The most complicated and recondite 
questions of time and eternity would be solvable 
by a process as sure and simple as the rule of 
three. 

1 ' But alas ! impatient souls, it is not so. His peo- 
ple do not get into the promised land that way. We 
must accept and adjust ourselves to the limitations 
and uncertainties to which Infinite Wisdom has 
seen fit to subject us, even in the realm of Reve- 
lation. Nay, these very disabilities (as our short- 
sighted judgment is apt to deem them) are not only 
in harmony with the conditions of our being in 
relation to physical and intellectual truth, but are 
suited to nurture a reverent sense of dependence, 
a prayerful search for guidance, which in them- 
selves are consummate blessings, and which in the 
end will inherit the promises." 

The "Genesis" of the book, to use a common 
phrase, is this : Inquiry on the part of Parishioners, 
induced me, some years ago, to draw up, in sub- 
stance, the propositions which form the basis of the 
closing chapter. Around this, has grown up an 
expansion of remark and illustration. Some of the 
higher critics would have us believe that a portion 
of the Pentateuch is a growth around the ten 



THE CASK STATED. 25 

words, or Ten Commandments. However this may 
be, these pages are assuredly the work of one 
man. 

It is, I firmly believe, by Divine ordering, that, 
while the Articles of the Faith remain intact, the 
Church in every age is a learner ; and that the roots of 
these fresh lessons are in Scripture. The Great 
Householder is continually bringing out of His treas- 
ures, things, new, as well as old. Pastor Robinson 
said with truth to the Pilgrim Fathers, who were 
about to set sail with him from Holland, " I charge 
you if any fresh truth break forth from God's Word, 
receive it." The way in which fresh truth does thus 
continually break forth from Scripture is a proof of 
its depth and power. It has reserved riches, ' ' good- 
ness laid up for them that fear Him," (Ps-. xxi, 31). 
Bishop Butler, with his calm sagacity, said, 150 
years ago, "And, as it is owned that the whole 
scheme of Scripture is not yet understood, so if it 
ever comes to be understood, before the the resti- 
tution of all things, and without miraculous inter- 
position, it must be, in the same way as natural 
knowledge is come at, by the continual progress of 
learning and of liberty, and by particular persons 
attending to, comparing and pursuing, intimations 
scattered up and down in it, which are overlooked and 
disregarded by the generality of the world. ' ' One or 
two instances of pursuing intimations will hereafter 



26 THE LIFK TO COME. 

be given. I once called attention in the pulpit to 
the words, ' ' seeketh diligently till he find it, ' ' in the 
Parable of the Lost Sheep, in S. Luke xv., not 
knowing that Canon Farrar had done the same 
thing. 

The discussions which resulted in the formulation 
of the Nicene Creed, and in later times, the Eucha- 
ristic controversy, are instances. Such questions can- 
not be settled in a day. Truth exists all the time, 
but it must be mined for; we must "Seek her as 
silver and search for her, as for hid treasures." 
Men are feeling after the truth, sometimes groping 
after it. And they have sometimes also been treated 
so roughly and harshly by professional guides as to be 
turned from the search altogether. Cast-iron doctrin- 
aires frown upon discussion. In such cases, no doubt, 
there is much speculation, and no small amount 
of crude writing and thinking. Things that have 
been said or written, require modification, perhaps 
withdrawal. 

But through straits and shoals, and dangerous 
currents, God is guiding the vessel, and will bring 
it into port. I see in these discussions His guid- 
ing hand, not man's rash intrusion into matters 
which are too high for him. But, feeling all this, 
how can we help being cautious and weighing 
our words? We are not adding to the Articles of 
the Christian Faith. On the contrary, we are 



Tl-IK CASK STATED. 27 

endeavoring to dislodge one which has been 
unauthorizedly added. "I believe in the endless 
torment of the world to come." Our object is to 
protest against Bishop Pearson's cold, calm con- 
clusion of endless " cruciation," which he brings in 
under the head of the Life Everlasting. 

L,et me give a few illustrations of what the ques- 
tions at issue are. Upon the theories of human 
destiny which have been preached from many a pul- 
pit, there can be no sight sadder than that of a lot 
of boys and young men, engaged in an athletic 
game. Very few of them can stand a satisfactory 
religious examination. They have the faults of 
their time of life ; their characters are imperfectly 
developed, but the most reckless among them have 
many virtues ; and those very games require a self- 
discipline and self-restraint, which are important 
elements in character. 

They are apt to show their worst side. They are 
a convincing refutation of the revolting dogma of 
11 total depravity." One of them dies. Has he 
been hurried off to endless flames ? Or has his short, 
imperfect life, been simply the lowest class in the 
Divine School ? And is the work of education and 
discipline going on, where he is, under far more 
favorable circumstances ? Poor boy ! his death has 
been made the subject of many a warning to his 
comrades. Fortunately he has fallen into the hand 



28 THE LIl'K TO COME. 

of the Lord, whose mercies are great, and not into 
the hand of man : who, often has no mercy at 
all.* 

Or, a young man, under stress of strong tempta- 
tion, or domestic trouble, becomes a drunkard. God 
and his own soul know how he has struggled 
against it. The foundation of his character with its 
nobleness, affection, generosity, remain. The cold, 
accurate theologian, pronounces his doom. Not so, 
S. Peter. "For, for this cause was the Gospel 
preached to dead men ; that they might be judged 
according to men in the flesh, but live according to 
God in the Spirit. ' ' Such a man must be j udged as a 
man, for the sins of his bodily life; but, underneath 
all these fleshly Sins, lay a spirit weighed down, and 



* Excepting in the words of Our Lord, I do not believe there has ever been 
such concentrated wisdom, as in these few of St. Paul, " Howbeit that was not 
first which is spiritual, but that which is natural ; and afterwards that which is 
spiritual." The contrast as he draws it, is between the First Man Adam, that 
grown-up child (for as such the account represents him) the living Sou/: and 
the Second Man, the Lord from Heaven, the quickening Spirit. But the 
priority in time of the natural to the spiritual holds equally good, in the same 
being, at different stages of development. In early years the bud of the Spirit- 
ual is indeed there. But any attempt to force it into premature flowering is 
sure to result disastrously. Man forces character, God never does. A play- 
ground of boys at recess will show what I mean. Why, we talk of their animal 
spirits. When choir boys sing, that they lie awake at night crying, because they 
cannot die and go to Heaven. (Hymn 407, part 3,) if a carnal feast was suddenly 
spread before their eyes, we should soon see what the real boy was. He is 
simply a green man. And yet, under certain theological systems, many a 
parent has been made profoundly wretched, from the fear that a dear boy is 
" lost," because he has died without giving " evidence of conversion." The 
grace of Baptism does not work prematurely, but grows with the growth, and 
strengthens with the strength. 



THE CASE STATED. 2Q 

for the time being, kept under. As Tennyson says, 

in the Vision of Sin : 

" He rode a horse with wings that would have flown, 
But that his heavy rider kept him down." 

God will speak to that spirit. There is a Gospel 
for him there. 

Or, here is a young man, whose very intelligence 
has exposed him to be taken captive by the scien- 
tific and agnostic speculations of the day. He has 
yielded to them, and so far as he could (he cannot 
altogether), has given up his Christian Faith. He 
may not be altogether in fault. Religious writers, 
with the best intentions, may have contributed to 
the mischief. They may have advanced theories of 
the Inspiration, and scientific accuracy of the Bible, 
which he knows to be untenable. Some defenders 
of the Bible, are, by the false issues which they raise, 
and the points on which they stake their defence, 
dangerous advocates. He is as good in all the rela- 
tions of life as ever. He dies. Does he go to de- 
struction? Or, does God, when these earthly im- 
pediments are removed, take him into His own 
school and teach him there ? 

According as we answer these questions, we wor- 
ship two opposite Gods. 

It has been remarked, that there is a strong con- 
trast, between the reserve of the Bible, in speaking 
of the fate of the departed, and the bold assumptions 



30 THE LIFE TO COME. 

of knowledge, made by the ordinary preacher. 
Take, for instance, the case of Ananias and Sap- 
phira. They are struck with death for a lie : 
caught red-handed, and taken out of the world. 
The fact upon which S. Luke lays stress, is that 
they both received Christian burial. "And the 
young men arose, wound him up, and carried him 
out, and buried him." "And the young men came 
in, and found her dead, and carrying her forth, 
buried her by her husband." These young men 
were evidentl) r church officers of some kind ; a sort 
of S. Andrew's Brotherhood. And even the natural 
desire of husband and wife, to be buried side by 
side, was gratified. This is the fact he emphasizes. 
But here he stops. It is a marvelous and instructive 
reticence, one of the instances of the restraint of 
Inspiration. It is left to the sensational preacher 
to open the pit, and to loose the seals thereof. 

In marked contrast to this silence, is the follow- 
ing gloss of a modern commentator. One would 
think, that the grief of David over Absalom, "O 
my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would 
God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my 
son," could not have been dragged down and 
degraded, by being mixed with fire and brimstone. 
Yet these are Bishop Wordsworth's remarks : ' ' Why 
this mourning for Absalom ? Why so intense a 
sorrow for it? It was because David believed in 



THE CASE STATED. 3 1 

the Resurrection, and in the Judgment to come, and 
in a future State of Rewards and Punishments. It 
was because Absalom had been cut off in an act of 
sin ; the wages of which are the second death ; and 
because by Absalom's death, the door of repentance 
and pardon was shut upon him. David did not 
weep because he had lost a son ; but because he 
knew into what punishments that son's guilty soul 
was carried away by death. ' ' 

How is it, then, that when David wrote his 
Psalm of Penitence (51st, which the higher critics 
fail to convince me was written in the Maccabaean 
era, and not by the royal penitent), he says not one 
word about the punishments of the next world ; but 
all his thoughts are centered upon the essential 
heinousness in the sight of God, of the dark group 
of sins, which lay heavy upon his soul ? And how 
did Bishop Wordsworth know that Absalom did not 
repent while he was hanging in the oak ? 
I quote from one of Spurgeon's sermons : 
" Only conceive that poor wretch in the flames, 
who is saying, O, for one drop of water, to cool my 
parched tongue. See how his tongue hangs from 
his blistering lips ; how it lacerates and burns the 
lips of his mouth, as it were a firebrand. Behold 
him crying for a drop of water. I will not picture 
the scene. Suffice it for me to close up by saying, 
that the hell of hells will be to thee, poor sinner, 



32 THE LIFE TO COME. 

the thought that it will be forever. Thou wilt 
look up there on the throne of God, and 011 it 
shall be written, forever. When the damned 
jingle the burning irons of their torments, they 
shall say, forever. When they howl, echo cries, 
forever. 

" We are sometimes accused my brethren of using 
language too harsh, too ghastly, too alarming, with 
respect to the world to come ; but we will not soon 
change our note ; for we solemnly believe, that, if 
we could speak thunderbolts, and in every look 
were a lightning flash, if our eyes dropped blood, 
instead of tears, no tones, words, gestures, or 
similitudes of dread, could exaggerate the condi- 
tion of a soul, which has refused the Gospel, and is 
delivered over to justice." 

An admirer of Mr. Spurgeon once said to me — 
11 In the morning he preaches to Christians; and in 
the evening he preaches the Gospel." 

Is it to be wondered at, that such extracts were 
printed, and distributed at the meetings held in 
Bradlaugh's Hall of Science, as the strongest argu- 
ment against Christianity ? 

An Universalist was observed to be buying up all 
available copies of Jonathan Edwards' Sermon on 
Everlasting Punishment. He was asked the 
explanation. His reply was, that it was the best 
Universalist tract he could find. 



THH CASK STATED. 33 

I might add an extract from another author, 
describing the horror of the burning of a naughty 
child. But I spare my readers and myself. 

Is it not a strong argument for Christianity, that 
it can bear to be so caricatured by its professed 
teachers, and yet live ? 

This chapter shall be closed with an extract from 
a work of which much will be said hereafter. 

" There is one thing which astonishes me beyond 
measure, and that is, that any attempt to show from 
Scripture, that the Salvation of Christ is more 
embracive than is commonly imagined, calls forth 
a display of the bitterest hostility, and the most 
cruel misrepresentations. It is one of the puzzles 
of human nature. Unless experience had taught us 
otherwise, we should be inclined to think, that a 
Christianity, whose chief characteristic is described 
by S. Paul, as charity, which hopeth all things, 
would hail with intense delight, the thought of 
salvation beyond the grave, for poor unfortunates, 
who have lived and died, without, in some cases, one 
of the religious advantages which we enjoy. That 
the attitude of a man or woman, bearing the name 
of a pitiful Christ, toward any suggestion of such 
a hope, would be, 'Thank God. Tell me, are 
there any statements in the Bible, upon which I 
can rest such a magnificent belief? ' How devoutly 
I wish you may be right in what you say. How 



34 THE UFE TO COME. 

far more glorious and attractive will it make the 
Gospel to me. 

"But no, strange as it may seem, the tendency 
of some minds is towards a creed of merciless 
severity. Preachers have earned the reputation of 
being able exponents of Scripture, who have attrib- 
uted to the God, whose Name is Love, conduct 
sufficient to shock the sensibilities of a Hottentot ; 
while those who, Bible in hand, have ventured to 
cast doubt upon the miserable restrictions, which 
men have set upon Divine 1,0 ve and Mercy, have 
been loaded with abuse and branded as enemies of 
truth.'' 

" This witness is true." 






CHAPTER II. 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 

Let me ask the Reader, to remember the Title of 
this Chapter. It is not a History. It is an outline 
drawing, not a filled- in picture. I shall try to pre- 
sent lucidly the prominent facts. The earlier ones 
will be given with little comment. There will be 
more as we come to modern times. 

In the second, third, and fourth centuries we 
find— 

i. That the ultimate annihilation of the wicked, 
was maintained by some, although not contended 
for, or held earnestly: being rather set up to combat 
Plato's theory of the natural immortality of the 
Soul, than for its own sake. 

2. That it was by no means a matter of the faith 
to hold either the cessation of God's work upon the 
Soul in this life ; or the endless punishment of the 
wicked. There was a tone of hesitation, and even 
of uncertainty in speaking of the future of sin and 
of the work of God, in the Intermediate State, in 
purifying souls that were capable of purification. 
In some cases, the ' ' faintly trust the Larger Hope ' ' 
of Tennyson describes the feeling. But that very 
uncertainty shows that the question was considered 

(35) 



36 THE UFK TO COME. 

an open one. S. Jerome, a doughty champion of 
orthodoxy, speaking of the views of Origen, says, 
"Those who think that the punishment of the 
wicked, will one day, after many ages, have an 
end, rely on these testimonies" (he quotes several 
passages). "And this we ought to leave to the 
knowledge of God alone ; whose torments, no less 
than His compassion, are in due measure : and who 
knows how and how long, He ought to punish." 
What S. Jerome thus treated as an open question, 
could not have been in his opinion, de fide. 

3. Origen (185-251) may be considered the first 
out-and-out Universalist. His Universalism had 
these two special points : 1. It was connected with 
his doctrine of the pre-existence of Souls- 2. It em- 
braced the restoration of the devil and his angels. 
And indeed, it is hard to see how any Scheme of 
Universalism can help including them. He openly 
proclaims his belief, that the goodness of God, when 
each sinner shall have received the penalty of his 
Sin, will through Christ, lead the whole universe to 
one End. Dean Plumptre says, " It deserves to be 
noticed, that an ambiguous anathema, pronounced 
by a council of no authority, under the weak 
and vicious Emperor Justinian, is the only ap- 
proach to a condemnation of the Eschatology of 
Origen, which the annals of Church Councils 
present." 



HISTORICAL NOT£S. 37 

4. But whatever may be said of Origen's some- 
time mystical and obscure utterances, the Universal- 
ism of Gregory of Nyssa (332-394), was clear, 
unmistakable and unlimited. " What Origen whis- 
pered in the ear, was proclaimed by him upon the 
housetops." All punishment is, according to him, 
remedial and purgatorial, more or less severe, ac- 
cording to the necessities of each case ; but issuing 
in each one in immortality, life and honor. ' ' And 
he claims to be taking his stand on the doctrine of 
the Church in thus teaching, with as much confi- 
dence as when he is expounding the mysteries of the 
Divine Nature, as set forth in the Creed of Nicsea. ' ' 
He had more to do than any in his day, in formu- 
lating that addition to the Nicene Creed, which the 
First Council of Constantinople adopted, and which 
ends with the words, ' ' the L,ife of the World to 
come." A man who taught thus, could never have 
meant to bring in " death," under cover of " life." 
To show that his reputation for orthodoxy was 
unblemished, let it be added, that he was chosen by 
the Council of Constantinople (381) to be one of 
the ' ' Centres of faith ' ' for the Catholic Commun- 
ion, i. e. y an arbiter of orthodoxy for his own and 
other congregations, principally in Pontus. 

And, now we come to the man, who, more than 
any, influenced the theology of his day, and has 
influenced that of all days since ; the intellectual 



38 THK UFK TO COME. 

giant of the fourth and fifth centuries, S. Augustine. 
I doubt whether there are any of us, who are not to 
some extent, feeling that influence ; whether, in- 
deed, it is possible for us fully to escape it. He was 
a Calvinist before Calvin, only his Calvinism was of 
a more ecclesiastical character. He believed that 
there was no salvation outside the Church ; but he 
did not hold that all the members of the Church 
would be saved. By the Divine decree, some of 
them were predestinated to continuance in well do- 
ing, to final perseverance and salvation, others were 
not. Those were eternally lost. Those who were 
to be saved, departed this life, with more or less of 
evil clinging to them. They needed and must un- 
dergo a purifying process. Calvinistic Protestantism 
and Mediaeval Purgatory, are both traceable to this 
one man. A multitude of generations intervened, 
but Augustine begat Tetzel and Jonathan Edwards. 
Strange progeny of the same father. 

But even he admits the allowability of the hopeful 
view which had gained ground, although speaking 
with a good-natured contempt of those who held it, 
as M our compassionate friends." He concedes that 
between death and judgment, there may be punish- 
ments, that endure for a season only ; that some 
sins, not forgiven in this world, are forgiven in the 
world to come. ' ' We pray for those who have not 
utterly fallen from grace ; that, after punishments, 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 39 

the Divine compassion may be showed to them, so 
that they may not go into the Eternal Fire." 

And so the dark shadow of Augustine fell upon 
the Western Church, and rested upon it for a thous- 
and years.* 

Now, in that upheaval of thought, which took 
place at the Reformation, not only the trade in 
Masses, a Purgatorial fire, Indulgences, and all the 
accretions and abuses which had grown up around 
the belief in a Purification for souls after death ; 
but the main point around which they centred, the 
post-mortem advancement and improvement of the 
Soul, went with them. The sternness of Augus- 
tinian theology came out into bold relief, without 
the mitigation, which that theology itself intro- 
duced, as a partial remedy to itself. And that, 
which was inwoven into the very texture of Early 
Christianity, prayers for the departed, fell into dis- 
favor. Hence it was held, that, at the moment of 
death, the condition of the Soul was irretrievably 
fixed; that there were two classes, the saved and 
the lost : in one or the other of which, each soul 
found its endless place, when it left the body ; that 
no prayers of survivors could be of any avail ; and 
that no work of God upon the departed was possible. 
The Book of Homilies, then published to supply 



* How thrilling it would be, if this man rose from the dead, and told us what 
he thinks now. And many others besides S. Augustine. 



40 THK UKK TO COMK. 

sermons for a clergy, which had not been used to 
preaching, says, in the Sermon on Prayer, ' ' As the 
Scripture teacheth us, let us think that the Soul of 
man, passing out of the body, goeth straightway 
Either to Heaven or to Hell ; whereof the one 
needeth no prayer, and the other is without 
redemption." Strange to say, S. Augustine is 
quoted as authority for this statement. And 
thus, a theology, partly the result of a recoil, 
and partly the result of a policy, which strove 
to bring the Ancient Church of England into 
line with the Continental Communions that were of 
yesterday, but which was utterly unknown to 
primitive Christianity, actually for the time re- 
ceived the stamp of an exclusive orthodoxy, and to 
some extent still, brands those who deny it as 
unsound. It is one among the many lessons, of the 
Eternal Vigilance, which is the price of safety, 
against novel opinions being first suffered to pass 
unchallenged, then being naturalized as Articles of 
Faith, and finally excluding the home-born citizen. 
The Thirty-nine Articles were originally Forty- 
three. The Forty-second, adopted in 1553, was 
designed not only to shut the door of hope, but 
to lock it. The heading was, "All men shall not 
be saved at the length." It ran thus : " They also 
are worthy of condemnation, who endeavor at 
this time to restore the dangerous opinion ' ' (mark 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 4 1 

the word " restore," showing that the opinion was 
no new one) "that all men, be they never so un- 
godly, shall at length be saved, when they have 
suffered pains for their sins, a certain time, ap- 
pointed by God's justice." In 1563, there was a 
Revision of the Articles. This one, and three others, 
were omitted, thus reducing the number to thirty- 
nine. The Article in question appears in the MSS. 
of Archbishop Parker, as prepared for Convocation ; 
but was erased, as the result of discussion, before 
the articles were subscribed by the Bishop. We are 
in the dark as to why it was struck out, and it is 
useless work to imagine reasons for what people did 
who lived three centuries or more ago. 

One thing is certain, that in the latter part of the 
seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, when men had had time to think calmly, 
there was a return to the primitive liberty of 
thought. Jeremy Taylor has been mentioned. Arch- 
bishop Tellotson, whose views created no small 
commotion, held that God was not bound to fulfil 
a threat ; as He was a promise.* L,aw, the author 
of the " Serious Call " (a book once very popular), 
says, ' ' As for the purification of all human nature 
either in this world, or in some after age, I fully be- 
lieve it. ' ' But most conspicuous is the phenomenon 



* Is not this a dangerous doctrine ; unless confined to cases like the Nine- 
Vites? 



42 THE UFE TO COME. 

of Bishop Newton (about 1750) the Author of 
a work on the Prophecies. He preached an Uni- 
versalism as wide and unlimited as that of Gregory 
of Nyssa. It is remarkable that such language as 
this in a published Sermon, produced no pamphlet, 
counter-statement, nor outcry of alarm. It is in- 
deed, the boldest and most startling utterance in 
the whole range of English Theology. ' ' The 
Eternal Punishment is of the wicked : and the 
wicked may repent, and change." "To suppose 
that a man's happiness and misery to all eternity 
should be absolutely and unchangeably fixed and 
determined by the uncertain experience of a few 
years in this life, is a supposition even more unrea- 
sonable than that a man's mind and manners, should 
be completely formed and fashioned in his cradle, 
and his whole future fortune depend altogether upon 
his infancy." M It cannot consist with the mercy, 
or goodness, or wisdom, or even the justice of the 
Supreme Being, to punish any of His creatures, for 
no end or purpose, neither for their own correc- 
tion, nor for a warning to others. ' Yet, what fol- 
lows is hardly consistent.' Time, and torments, 
much more, an Eternity of torments, must over- 
come the proudest Spirit, and the Devil himself 
must at last, be subdued, and submit." 

But we now come down to the middle of the 
present century, and to a singular phenomenon. 



HISTORICAL NOTKS. 43 

In the year 1853, the Rev. F. D. Maurice, was a 
Professor in King's College, Iyondon. He was 
brought up an Universalist, renounced that creed, 
and never returned to it. He published in 1853 the 
Theological Essays, which led to his expulsion 
from the college. His offence consisted in main- 
taining (1) that our I^ord had excluded the notion 
of duration from the word " eternal." This was a 
point on which he always laid great stress ; (2) 
That the three-score years and ten of man's life do 
not absolutely limit the Compassion of the Father 
of Spirits ; (3) That we want that clear, broad 
assertion of the Divine charity, which the Bible 
makes, and which carries us immeasurably beyond 
all we can ask or think. Add the following, 
' ' What dream of ours can reach to the assertion ot 
S. John, that death and hell shall be cast into the 
lake of fire ? I cannot fathom the meaning of such 
expressions. But they are written. I accept them, 
and give thanks for them. I feel that there is an 
abyss of death, into which I may sink, and be lost. 
But there is an abyss of love below that. I am 
content to be lost in that." 

Language this, not to be compared in strength, 
with much that had passed unchallenged, all along. 
But, in all this, Dr. Jelf, the President of the Col- 
lege, saw, what seemed to him, after a prolonged 
correspondence, ' 'A denial of the eternity of Future 



44 THK UFK TO COME. 

Punishment ; or, at least, an atmosphere of doubt 
cast upon the simple meaning of the word ' Eter- 
nal, ' and a general notion of the ultimate salvation 
of all, which was calculated to unsettle the minds 
of the students." 

It does indeed seem strange that a tempest arose 
just at this time, and from this cause. But it is in 
the religious as in the political world. Revolutions 
occur unexpectedly, and from trifling occasions. 
The causes lie far back. The character of Dr. Jelf, 
probably had much to do with it. And then Mr. 
Maurice was a literary puzzle. Take each of his 
sentences by itself, and it seems perfectly plain. 
Take a paragraph, and it is obscure. Bishop Wil- 
berforce, who stood his friend, tried to translate 
him into plain English, and put an orthodox mean- 
ing on his words, which Mr. Maurice was quite 
willing to accept, as being his own meaning. So 
grave was the position that Mr. Gladstone tried to 
mediate, but in vain. Dr. Jelf was obdurate, and 
insisted upon Mr. Maurice's expulsion. But Mr. 
Maurice retained the chaplaincy of Lincoln's Inn, 
and afterwards became Incumbent of S. Peter's, 
Vere St., Oxford St. Some of my readers may 
have seen the unattractive church in which he 
ministered. It was well said, "Even religious 
rancor could not shake' his position as a teacher of 
the Church of England." 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 45 

But one part of Mr. Maurice's statement of his 
own views, is so important that I shall dwell upon 
it. " My duty, I feel is this. . . . Not to play 
with Scripture, by quoting passages, which have 
not the slightest connection with the Subject ; such 
as ' In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall 
be.' " This text is always cited by those who insist 
upon the stereotyped condition of the Soul at death. 
There seems to be no other, on which they can fall 
back. It is actually the only one quoted in the 
Homily on Prayer, to which reference has been 
made ; and the Homilists had great facility of 
Scripture reference- Very lately I have seen 
a fervid harangue by a well-known sensational 
preacher, closing with it. Whether the Book of 
Ecclesiastics, in which it occurs, was written by 
Solomon himself (as I should like to think, if mod- 
ern criticism would allow me,) or by some one who 
has admirably personated the royal profligate, the 
book is an illustration of the best that can be made 
out of a blase voluptuary, when he repents ; and the 
irreparable spiritual loss, he has sustained. " Much 
of it is the utterance of a backslidden man, who, at 
times was all but engulfed in agnosticism. Many 
of its utterances are completely opposed to the 
teachings of Our I^ord, and are recorded in the 
Sacred Canon merely to show how perverted the 
Spirit's judgment may become when the reins have 



46 THE UFK TO COMK. 

been given to lust, and worldly-mindedness. " Thus 
viewed, these confessions have a solemn use. They 
are perverted if they are made exponents of Chris- 
tian doctrine. It is an instance of the misleading 
practice of taking isolated texts, no matter in 
what book they are found, and quoting them as 
conclusive. The whole passage is (Ecc. xi : 3), 
"If the clouds be full of rain, they empty them- 
selves upon the earth ; and if the tree fall toward 
the South, or toward the North, in the place where 
the tree falleth, there it shall be." The idea of this, 
with the illustrations which surround it, is that we 
must accept the inevitable, and do our duty in life 
under all circumstances, unfavorable or favorable, as 
well as w r e can. How would we like to deduce doc- 
trine from these passages in the same book ? ' ' There 
is nothing better for a man than that he should eat 
and drink, and that he should delight his senses 
(marginal reading) in his labor," (ii : 24). That 
was exactly what Dives did. He "was clothed in 
purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every 
day. " "I said in my heart concerning the estate 
of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, 
and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. 
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth 
the beasts. Even one thing befalleth them. As 
the one dieth, so dieth the other. Yea, they have 
all one breath. So that a man hath no pre-eminence 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 47 

above a beast, for all is vanity. All go unto one place ; 
all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again, (iii : 
18-20). Or who will endorse the following : " Be- 
hold, this have I found," saith the Preacher, 
1 ' counting one by one to find out the account, which 
yet my soul seeketh, but I find not. One man 
among a thousand have I found : but a wo?nan 
amo?ig all those have I not found." (xiii : 27, 28). 
Finally, ' ' A living dog is better than a dead lion : 
for the living know that they shall die ; but the dead 
know not any thing ." (ix : 4, 5.) 

The Agnostic cannot find his sentiments more 
strongly expressed than in this book. 

We pass naturally, from the Master to the disciple. 
For the Reverend Charles Kingsley would never 
have been what he was but for Maurice, whose 
ideas he imbibed, and gave them to the world, 
both in the pulpit and in books. But he gave them 
as Charles Kingsley, and not as Frederick Denison 
Maurice. The men were very different in their 
casts of mind. There was nothing of the mystic 
about Kingsley ; there was no difficulty in under- 
standing him. His sermons are clear-cut. They 
were intelligible to the peasantry of Eversley, and 
they satisfied the refinement of the county families 
of Hants. They carry out the thoughts of Maurice, 
and are another illustration of the fact more than 
once to be referred to, that the I^arger Hope is no 



48 THE LIFE TO COME. 

mild dream : for I recall a sermon on Confirmation 
to the young, by him, than which nothing could be 
more searching and severe. 

The once famous Essays and Reviews shocked 
the orthodoxy of thirty-five years ago. That of the 
Reverend H. B. Wilson closed with a few words, 
which gave rise to a litigation costing thousands of 
pounds: " What shall become of the many, who, at 
the close of their life upon Earth, are but rudimen- 
tary spirits — germ souls ? The Roman Church has 
imagined a Iambus Infantum ; we must rather 
entertain a hope that there shall be found after the 
great adjudication, receptacles suitable for those, 
who shall be infants, not as to years of terrestrial 
life, but as to spiritual developments ; nurseries, as 
it were, and seed grounds, where the undeveloped 
may grow up under new conditions, and the per- 
verted be restored. And, when the Christian 
Church, in all its branches, shall have fulfilled its 
sublunary office, and its Founder shall have 
surrendered His Kingdom to the Great Father, 
all, both small and great, shall find a refuge in 
the bosom of the Universal Parent, to repose, or 
be quickened into higher life, in the ages to come, 
according to His Will." For these words, he 
was prosecuted, and judgment given against him 
in the Lower Ecclesiastical Court. This judg- 
ment was reversed by the Judicial Committee 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 49 

of Privy Council, the Final Court of Appeal 
in cases ecclesiastical. It consisted of Lord 
Chancellor Westbury ; the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, Dr. IyOngley; the Archbishop of York, Dr. 
Thompson; the Bishop of London, Dr. Tait, after- 
wards Archbishop of Canterbury ; and three Lords. 
The Court say, " We are not required, or at liberty, 
to express any opinion upon the mysterious question 
of the eternity of Future Punishments, further than 
to say, that we do not find in the formularies to 
which the Prosecution refers, any such distinct 
declaration of the Church upon the subject ; as to 
require us to consider as penal, the expression of a 
hope, by a clergyman that even the ultimate pardon 
of the wicked who are condemned in the Day of 
Judgment, may be consistent with the will of Al- 
mighty God." It should be remembered that in a 
prosecution like this, when the interpretation of 
articles, or other Formularies against a respondent 
is invoked, those formularies become penal statutes, 
and therefore, according to the principles of law, are 
to be strictly construed. Hence, the expression 
' ' Condemned as penal. ' ' 

Against this decision a characteristic protest was 
set on foot by Dr. Pusey, who attempted to unite 
both sections of the Church, in a crusade against 
these obnoxious theologians. It was circulated both 
in England, and in America, in conjunction with 



50 THE UEE TO COME. 

another point raised against the Essays and Reviews. 
It obtained many signatures then. I do not think 
it would have so many now. 

In the year 1870, a volume of Essays on various 
Church topics, edited by Bishop Ellicott, was pub- 
lished, called, " The Church and the Age." The 
first of them is by the editor himself. He devotes a 
few pages to the subject of Eternal Punishment, 
but they are golden ones. We have the charge of 
an impartial Judge to a jury, not the ingenious advo- 
cacy of the acute barrister, seeking only for a ver- 
dict. In this respect he reminds one of the late 
Dean Church. He says, ' ' While time lasts, as long 
as history has not closed, we may conceive the possi- 
bility of conversion (meaning, of course, for those 
who have departed this life), but when that termi- 
nus peremptorius , which every deeper conviction 
recognizes in the Lord's advent, is finally come, 
when the side of the foe has been taken, and an 
alien destiny deliberately chosen, the conclusion 
seems irresistible, that where lost angels are, there 
lost men will be forever. ' ' 

I call attention to the words with which he closes 
the discussion: "Just for the present, the contro- 
versy remains in abeyance ; but that it will be re?iewed 
again, no one can doubt." 

And the renewal came, seven years later, when 
Canon Farrar, as Canon in Residence, in Westmins- 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 51 

ter Abbey, preached his celebrated sermons on 
" Eternal Hope." He disavows Universalism. He 
draws out the grand results which flow from the 
preaching of our Lord to the spirits in prison. ' ' He 
denounces," says Dr. Plumptre, " with all his glow- 
ing eloquence and overflowing richness of quota- 
tion, the popular conception of endless torments 
that serve only to harden, and of a state stereotyped 
to all the future ages, at the hour of death." These 
sermons have been, I think, unjustly criticised for 
' ' the passionate declamation with which the book 
abounds, and which is specially to be deplored on a 
subject, which demands, above all things, sobriety 
and reserve. ' ' I am glad to be supported in a differ- 
ent view by Dr. Plumptre, who says, ' ' The want of 
formulated system, on which second-rate critics 
have dwelt, as the characteristic defect of Dr. Farrar, 
is to me his chief charm ; the witness to a calmness 
and sobriety of thought underlying all his glowing 
eloquence. He has given utterance to a protest 
against human exaggerations, or distortions of Di- 
vine truth ; and such a protest against our instinctive 
convictions in the righteousness and love of God, 
can only express itself in language of indignant hor- 
ror." Every writer has his own style ; and Dr. 
Farrar is nothing if not rhetorical. Recollect, too, 
that these are Sermons, arid a man unconsciously 
writes in a very different style, with a congregation 



52 the life to come. 

before his mind, from that which he would adopt 
in a book meant to be read. And when a man 
preaches against those who hold that uncountable 
numbers of the human race are to be burned up 
alive endlessly, whether the flame consists in mate- 
rial fire or in spiritual tortures, it is not easy to write 
in the style of a treatise on political economy. If 
any one supposes that Dr. Farrar thinks or speaks 
lightly of sin, let him read his Sermons on the Ten 
Commandments. 

The next milestone on our road brings us to 
a pleasanter prospect. Dr. Farrar proceeded to for- 
tify the positions he had taken in " Eternal Hope," 
by an elaborate work. His chain of quotations am- 
ply sustains the title " Mercy and Judgment." But 
the book had this unexpected and gratifying result. 

Dean Stanley once expressed the wish that 
"Eirenics," the Theology of Peace, might have 
some place as well as " Polemics," the Theology of 
War. Dr. Pusey, who seems to have taken for 
granted that anything proceeding from the pen of 
Dr. Farrar, must be dangerous and unsound, to use 
his favorite phrase, causing "countless loss of 
souls," wrote to the Reverend James Skinner, we 
are informed in the Life of Mr. S, saying, "I am 
answering Farrar' s mischievous book." The book 
thus evoked, was called "What is of Faith as to 
Everlasting Punishment." But this was the result. 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 53 

Dr. Farrar found himself entirely in accord with Dr. 
Pusey on every essential point, and read his essay 
with unspeakable thankfulness. It was certainly 
much more agreeable to have Dr. Pusey for an ally 
than an adversary. Dr. Pusey, in his turn, admits 
that the substitution of the idea of a future purifica- 
tion, instead of a state of probation, would put Dr. 
Farrar into union with the whole of Christendom. 
Had he known how ready Dr. Farrar was to make 
this substitution he would have re- written his book 
and would have said, " You seem to me to deny 
nothing which I believe." The following words of 
Dr. Pusey, coming from him were as unexpected as 
they are gratifying: "Will any soul be lost, 
heathen, idolater, heretic, or in any hereditary form 
of misbelief on unbelief, if, in good faith, he was what 
he was ; living up to the light he had, whencesoever 
it came, and repenting when he did amiss ? All 
Christendom would answer you 'God forbid.' He 
would be saved by the One Love of God the Father, 
Who made him ; of God the Son, Who redeemed 
him ; and God the Holy Ghost, Who ... in 
His measure, sanctified him." 

It is to be feared, however, that Dr. Pusey took 
too rose-colored a view of the consent of " Christen- 
dom ;" or of the answer that would be made by all 
' { well-instructed Christians. ' ' A good deal depends 
upon whom he included under these terms. His 



54 THE LIFE TO COME. 

own gradual but decided change on this subject is 
remarkable. He could not have written this in his 
earlier days. 

I come now to the Spirits in Prison, and other 
studies in the Life After Death (1884) by the Dean 
of Wells, Dr. Plumptre. The spirit of the book 
may be judged from the fact, that it is dedicated to 
the loved and honored memory of Frederick Deni- 
son Maurice. The sermon which gives it its title 
was preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, April 30th, 
1 87 1. Of course the text was, " He went and 
preached unto the spirits in prison." What the 
author of it says of "Eternal Hope " is equally true 
of his own sermon. It was " Epoch-making." Not 
more truly did Schliemann excavate the ruins of 
Troy, or Petrie those of Thebes, than did this ser- 
mon disinter the buried Article of the Apostles' 
Creed, " He descended into Hell." Bishop Horsley 
is the only one I am aware of, who had treated that 
text at all satisfactorily in the pulpit, and he was 
restrained by conventional trammels of interpretation 
which Dr. Plumptre cast off. The sermon is a 
revelation. Read it, and it will be so to you. The 
rest of the book is a series of essays on subjects con- 
nected with the future of sin, written at different 
times, and not consecutive. The author calls atten- 
tion to the fact that there is some repetition in 
them, arising from disconnected composition. The 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 55 

book has been of the greatest use to me, in this 
chapter. One hardly knows how to formulate his 
conclusions. He is cautious and conservative. He 
is a disbeliever in annihilation of the wicked ; he 
cannot accept the theory of Universalism ; and does 
not hesitate to accept the thought of the punish- 
ment of evil as being endless. But he qualifies all by 
saying, " I hold that it is at variance with our belief 
in the eternal Love and Righteousness of God, to 
assume that any created will can be fixed in evil by 
a Divine decree, coming at the close of a few years 
of an imperfect probation ; and therefore that Scrip- 
ture, reason and analogy alike lead to the belief that 
we must supplement the idea of probation by that of 
a discipline and education*, which is begun in this 
life ; often with results which seem to us as failures 
and a hopeless waste, but to which, when we look 
before and after, we can affix no time limits. The 
will, iu the exercise of its imperishable gift of free- 
dom, may frustrate that education hereafter, as it 
frustrated it here ; but if it does so, it is because it 
kicks against the pricks of the long-suffering that is 
leading it to repentance ; and there, as here, it may 
accept even an endless punishment, and find peace 
in the acceptance." 

The next contribution of importance to this sub- 
ject is the work of Prebendary Row, of S. Paul's, 

* The present writer greatly prefers this phraseology to "future pronation." 



56 THE LIFE TO COME. 

published in 1887. If any one complains of the 
fervor of Dr. Farrar, let him enjoy the calmness of 
this able work. It has this peculiarity: that it is 
an examination of the Bible, book by book; treat- 
ing of every passage in every book, as well as a 
discussion of general principles. The patient study 
required to make such an exhaustive examination 
is incalculable. His conclusion is stated thus: " It 
is a blessed truth, affirmed by the Christian Revela- 
tion, that there is a time coming in the future, when 
God will have reconciled all things unto Himself; 
and when evil will cease to exist in the universe 
which He has created. There are only two ways in 
which this can be effected: either by the conversion 
of evil beings, or by causing them to cease to exist. 
The Universalist affirms that it is in accordance 
with the Divine character, that the mode in which 
this will be effected will be by their ultimate con- 
version. This, the language of the New Testament, 
taken in its obvious meaning, denies. It remains, 
therefore, that the second alternative is the only 
possible one; that evil beings will be annihilated, 
either by an exercise of God's almighty power, or 
because He has so constituted the moral universe 
that, under His providential government, the dis- 
ease of evil will ultimately destroy man's spiritual 
and moral being, just as incurable physical disease 
destroys his bodily life." 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 57 

Next follows a book, not one-fifth in size of the 
one just considered, but whose value is not to be 
estimated by its pages. I allude to " Our Catholic 
Inheritance in the Larger Hope," by the Reverend 
Alfred Gurney, Vicar of S. Barnabas, Pimlico. It 
was a paper read before a Society of Priests gathered 
together for conference, at S. Paul's Chapel House, 
on May 15, 1888. It was published, says the author, 
"at the request of some who heard it, whose wishes 
I could not disregard." 

The Reverend Archer Gurney, the father of the 
author, protested against Dr. Pusey's protest, in a 
letter to the Times, in or about the year 1864. This 
is a favorite method in England of ventilating a 
grievance, "writing to the Times." In it he de- 
scribes himself as " a High Churchman of no waver- 
ing faith." It was quoted in an article by Dean 
Stanley in the Edinburg Review on "The Three 
Pastorals. ' ' I can recall but a sentence or two. ' ' Is 
it necessary to remind learned men like you that 
what began in time may also end in time; that evil 
consists simply in rebellion against the will of God, 
and has no inherent, endless vitality?" Severer 
language followed. It is noticeable, also, that the 
son belongs to the "advanced," or "Catholic" 
school. One hesitates to generalize, but it seems to 
me that in England the eschatology of this school is 
in the direction of the Larger Hope, while in this 



58 THE LIFE TO .COME. 

country it is very austere. And it is significant 
that Mr. Gurney's paper was read before a Society 
of Priests gathered together for conference, and 
published by their request. 

In one view, the book tends towards Univer- 
salism ; in another, to the unoblite rated, but peni- 
tent memory, in the saved, of their sin; some- 
what in the line of Dr. Plumptre. But is this con- 
sistent with the fact that ' ' God shall wipe away 
every tear from their eyes?" One capital sentence 
I quote, "The popular teaching about hell is not 
austere; it is not even awful. It may scare chil- 
dren, it does not solemnize men." 

And now, let me speak of the last work on the sub- 
ject, which is, in some respects, the most remarkable 
of all. Some, perhaps many, of my readers, know it, 
and will anticipate the name. "Our L,ife After 
Death," by the Rev. Arthur Chambers, has been 
published this very year, yet has now (November, 
1895,) reached the seventh edition. Its alternate title 
is "The Teaching of the Bible Concerning the Un- 
seen World." And here is the Nemesis. The title 
page informs us that the author is Associate of King's 
College, London, the very college (shade of Dr. Jelf !) 
from which Maurice was banished for teaching not 
half so bold and plain. There is a preface, too, by the 
Rev. Canon Hammond (a strong Churchman, to 
judge from a book lately published by him), 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 59 

containing these words: "The doctrine of Eternal 
Torment, which has long held possession of the mind 
of Christendom, is responsible for no small share of 
the irreligion and infidelity, which unhappily pre- 
vail among us. People say, they cannot and will 
not embrace a creed which is so cruel and unjust, 
and so they throw religion over altogether. ' ' There 
is in the book that union of simplicity of style and 
depth of thought, which is so uncommon. He has 
opened up the meaning of familiar texts, in a way 
which largely fulfils Bp. Butler's prediction. The 
aim of the book is to show the greatness of the 
work going on in the intermediate state. It is an illus- 
tration of the truth of the remark made to me by 
an excellent theologian, years ago, that the solution 
of these questions would probably come from a 
better understanding of the nature of the interme- 
diate state. Its aim is to show that this life is but 
the beginning, often under unfavorable conditions, 
of the work which is not destroyed or abandoned at 
death, but is carried on after death under better 
auspices, and in a higher sphere. The book is 
practical, comforting and solemn. It is practical, 
because it brings the subject home to our daily life ; 
it is comforting, because it shows that no effort after 
a better life can possibly be unavailing. It is solemn, 
because it cuts up by the root the figment of an im- 
mediate purification at death, which makes the most 



60 THE LIFE TO COME. 

elementary and the most advanced Christian equal 
in the state beyond, and because it gives a scope to 
the Law of Retribution, which has practically been 
denied it, ' ' Whatsover a man soweth, that shall he 
also reap." 

It is another proof of the fact that the Larger 
Hope is a more solemn theology than that which it 
is displacing. 

Praise, with temperate criticism, is worth more 
than praise unqualified. In the next chapter, one 
point will be stated, on what I feel obliged to differ 
from Mr. Chambers. 

I cannot close this review without noticing a 
remarkable work, or rather collection of works, 
which is very little known ; partly owing to its large 
size (it is an octavo of 943 pages) and partly to its 
having been published by subscription. The Title 
page runs " That unknown country, or what living 
men believe concerning punishment after death ; 
together with recorded views of men of former times. 
The whole field explored; Every source of wisdom 
past and present made tributary to this theme — 
Man's final destiny." It is a collection of no fewer 
than fifty-one essays, written expressly for the book, 
which is edited by Dr. L. W. Bacon. Methodists, 
Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Unitar- 
ians, Universalists, Swedenborgians, German Re- 
formed, Lutheran, United Brethren, Moravians, and 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 6 1 

Hebrews are among the writers. Rome is repre- 
sented by Cardinal Manning and Dr. Hewitt, 
Superior of the Paulist Institute, New York. 
There are articles by Bishop Huntingdon, Dr. 
John Henry Hopkins, Dean Farrar, and the 
Rev. T. W. Fowle, an English Parish Priest. 
Rev. E. de Pressense, Life Member of the French 
Senate ; Dr. Godet, Professor of the Theological 
Faculty, Neuchatel, and the Rev. Dr. Luthardt, of 
Leipzig, contribute. Experts, not distinctly theo- 
logical, have also been called in, as Professor Rhys- 
Davids, whose forte is, Comparative Religion ; Pro- 
fessor Stanley Lane-Poole, translator of the Speeches 
and Table Talk of Mohammed ; and the Hon. G. 
G. Stokes, President of the Royal Society of Eng- 
land. 

The effect upon the mind would be strange, and 
hardly healthy, of reading such a Book straight 
through. We should get bewildered, at the variety 
of opinions ; and should seem to be looking at a 
confused kaleidescope of all shades of color. It 
embraces all views. We have not a few who hold 
the cessation of probation with this life and the end- 
less punishment of the wicked. Mr. White, the 
well-known champion of conditional immortality, 
has his say. The Andover Theology is represented. 
The Universalist has a fair field. Dr. John Henry 
Hopkins has an able article. I will give the heading 



62 >xHE ufe To Come. 

of his article: " Everlasting Life a dogma of the 
Catholic Church. Everlasting death an opinion, not 
a dogma." 

Of those which I have read, the one which best 
fulfils S. Paul's test, of "Commending itself to 
my conscience in the sight of God," is that by the 
Rev. Leonard Woolsey Bacon, D. D. 

This much is clear: 

i . There has been always in the Church a perfect 
liberty of thought on this subject. And there has 
been by no means that unanimity in holding the 
sterner view which is often taken for granted. The 
only two attempts to indict thinkers, who have used 
their liberty — Mr. Maurice and Mr. Wilson — have 
failed. I speak of the proceedings against Mr. 
Maurice as a failure, because although the right 
to teach was taken from him, the right to preach was 
not touched, nor attempted to be touched. 

2. The writers quoted have not only differed 
widely one from another, but occasionally an author 
appears to differ from himself. 

3. From Mr. Maurice down, while differing as to 
the annihilation of the wicked, they agree, with the 
possible exception of Mr. Gurney, in disclaiming 
Universalism. But they all lay stress on the work 
done in the intermediate state, bringing it into a 
prominence which has rarely been given to it since 
the Reformation. 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 63 

A few remarks on one or two points will close this 
chapter. 

In Hymn 75 of our old Hymnal, ' ' Glory be to 
Jesus," one line was: 

' * Who from endless torments 
Did the world redeem." 

I felt obliged to omit this verse in using the 
hymn. The new Hymnal has it: 

"Who from sin and sorrow 
Did the world redeem." 

As an offset to this improvement, however, the 
new Hymnal has introduced H. 621, containing the 

verse: 

" Mark us, whither are we tending, 
Ponder how we soon must go, 
To inherit bliss unending, 
Or eternity of woe. ' ' 

We are fortunately, however, spared the refrain, 
which stood in the first edition of Hymns, Ancient 
and Modern: 

"As the tree falls, so must it lie. 
As the man lives, so must he die. 
As the man dies, so must he be 
All through the days of eternity." * 

Is it not time that this poor, overworked text 
should have a vacation ? 



* After these pages were written I read with pleasure the London letter pub- 
lished in the Church Standard of November 30, 1895, containing an account 
of a sermon preached by Canon Wilberforce in Westminster Abbey, quite in the 
line of this work, and a comment on the omission of this refrain. 



64 THE) LIFE TO COME. 

In the first Church Hymnal, in use in this country 
up to 1826, there was a Hymn containing these verses: 
"The living know that they must die, 
But all the dead forgotten lie; 
Their memory and their hope are gone, 
Alike unknowing and unknown. 
There are no acts of pardon passed 
In the cold grave, to which we haste, 
But darkness, death and long despair 
Reign in eternal silence there." 

Was it not time for a Reformation when such senti- 
ments were put into the mouths of Christian people, 
and the strains of ' ' Old Hundred " or ' ' Duke Street, ' ' 
were invited to give them a musical currency ? Yet 
they are a faithful rendering of Ecclesiastes ix: 5, 6. 
In the office for theVisitation of Prisoners in the Prayer 
Book (which office is not in the English Book but is 
found in the Prayer Book of the Disestablished Church 
of Ireland?)* occur two objectionable exhortations.)" 



* The following is the authorization of this office : By the Lord Lieutenant 
and Council of Ireland. 

Shrewsbury 

Ordered, that the Form of Prayer for the Visitation of Prisoners, treated upon 
by the Archbishops and Bishops, and the rest of the clergy of this Kingdom, 
and agreed upon by her Majesty's license, in their Synod, holden at Dublin in 
the year 1711, be printed and annexed to the Book of Common Prayer, pursuant 
to her Majesty's directions. 

Given at the Council Chamber, in Dubl'n, the 13th day of April, 1714. 

(Signed) Tho. Armagh, R. 

— McGarvey's " Liturgiae Americanae," p. 385. 

f I refer my readers to these documents, found in the office for the Visitation 
of Prisoners. They are omitted in order to avoid enlarging this book ; with the 
hope that the reader will have interest enough in the subject to induce him to 
turn to the Prayer Book. 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 65 

i. Not only the one to be preached to the criminal 
under sentence of death, but the one addressed to 
any prisoner takes for granted that thej- are sinners 
above all men. Firmly believing that there are 
men on whom the law can never lay its hand, who 
are not only as bad as, but worse than, some that are 
in jail, I consider this tone of speaking as exagger- 
ated and untrue. 

2. I have alluded to the state of the criminal law 
of the last century. The first exhortation might be 
addressed to a man who was merely innocently 
unable to pay his debts. The second was to be used 
alike to the man condemned to death for larceny 
over the value of twelve pence, which under certain 
circumstances was then a capital crime, and to the 
murderer of the deepest dye. 

3. The whole drift of the address to the con- 
demned criminal is to produce repentance from the 
terror of the future. 

4. This address takes for granted that he has been 
j ustly convicted. This was taking entirely too much 
for granted in the eighteenth century. It was one 
of the barbarities of the criminal law, reaching 
down into this century, that no counsel was to be 
allowed to prisoners, even when on trial for their life. 

5. "God, Who, of His Endless pity, promiseth 
us forgiveness of that which is past. ' ' But presently 
he is told, "Since therefore you are soon to pass 



66 THE IvIFK TO COME. 

into an endless and unchangeable state, and your 
future happiness or misery depend upon the few 
moments that are left you. ' ' In other words, this 
' ' Endless ' ' pity is to die with the drop of the 
noose. 

I think there are many of my brethren who would 
decline to Exhort the Prisoner, either ' ' After this 
form, or other like." Sure I am that if our L,ord 
had addressed Publicans and Sinners in this spirit, 
they would not have drawn nigh unto Him to hear 
Him. 

On the other hand, this address is calculated to 
promote the delusion — and experience shows its 
danger — that a professed repentance, in sight of 
the gallows, or the electrical chair, is a passport to 
eternal happiness ; and still more, that a few tears 
or words constitute such a repentance. To guard 
against this danger, the Revised Prayer Book has 
wisely added the following Rubric : " It is judged 
best that the criminal should not make any public 
profession or declaration" — that is, at the time of 
execution. 

If man has it in his power to send his fellow-man 
to endless misery by one coup, there can be no 
question as to the unlawfulness of capital punish- 
ment : — nor of war. 

Note. — A few words may be added to this Chap- 
ter, upon the Kschatology of the Prayer Book : 



HISTORICAL NOTHS. 67 

especially since the above Exhortations have been 
pressed, as proving that Endless punishment is its 
teaching. The Book is made up of several portions, 
which are by no means of equal Authority. There 
are, first, the Creeds, of Apostolic, or Ecumenical 
Authority. Second, The Offices, Sacramental or 
otherwise, including the Ordinal, the Order of Con- 
firmation, with its Adjunct, the Catechism. In 
these, the mind of the Church has been deliberately 
expressed : although (except in the Catechism) 
not in formal propositions. Third, We have the 
Articles of Religion : a Series of doctrinal proposi- 
tions : a Compend of Dogmatic Theology : having 
the Special imprimatur of the Church of England. 
Fourth, The Prayers and Collects, Embodying doc- 
trine, liturgically : assuming it : building upon it : 
making it the basis of appeal to God. Thus does 
it use the Trinity and the Incarnation. Fifthly, 
we have the sermonettes scattered throughout the 
books, as in the Sacramental offices; and the Ordi- 
nal, and those just quoted: compiled mostly at the 
Reformation, to supply the lack of preaching power 
of the majority of the clergy. 

The Creeds, as I have said, are silent as to the 
future of sin. The Sacramental offices imply that 
a benefit is conferred upon the worthy receiver, and 
that there is danger arising to the Soul, from their 
misuse or neglect. In the Catechism, this is implied 



68 THE LIFE TO COME. 

in the expression, " Generally necessary to Salva- 
tion," and the darker side of the future is alluded 
to, in the expansion of the clause in the Lord's 
Prayer, "Deliver us from Evil," "And that He 
would deliver us from all sin and wickedness, and 
from our spiritual enemy, and from everlasting 
death. ' The candidate for the Priesthood is warned, 
"And if it shall happen that the same Church, or 
any member thereof, do take any hurt or hindrance 
by reason of your negligence, ye know the greatness 
of the fault, and also the horrible punishment that 
will ensue. (Is this an allusion to St. Luke xii: 46, 
where the unfaithful Steward is threatened, "The 
Lord of that servant will come in a day when he look- 
eth not for him, and a-t an hour when he is not aware, 
and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his 
portion with the unbelievers ? ") There is a petition 
in the Litany, " From everlasting damnation, Good 
Lord, deliver us." The original is, "a damnatione 
perpetua." This word is certainly equivalent to 
"Endless," and those Greek words, which, as 
I shall show, are not used in the New Testament. 

The Collects speak with guarded, general language 
and with reserve. " We, who for our evil deeds, do 
worthily deserve to be punished." "Grant us so 
to pass through things temporal, that we finally lose 
not the things eternal." Salvation is treated as a 
thing to be striven after, and which we may miss 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 69 

and lose. But absolute silence is maintained as to 
the nature of the poena damni, or of the punish- 
ment. So, with the burial office. There is what 
one may call a Catholic abstinence from the Pro- 
testant tendency to "preach the funeral," and to 
" improve the occasion." In the English Book, after 
the words, " that we may rest in Him," it is added, 
"as our hope is, this our brother doeth." The 
prayer, "deliver us not into the bitter pains of 
eternal death," is quite consistent, with a belief 
in conditional immortality. 

The Articles, revised fifteen years after the Lit- 
any, obliterated, as we have seen, one, denouncing 
Universalism, which had been in the original Arti- 
cles. The Prayer Book is to be interpreted as one 
document, all its parts being taken together, and it 
is to be interpreted historically. We must not for- 
get the omission of the Article in interpreting the 
Litany. These points, with an occasional allusion 
to "Eternal Death," I believe exhaust the subject. 

The form of Family Prayer, in our Prayer Books, 
is not in that of the Church of England. It has the 
words, "according to the works done in the body, 
be eternally rewarded or punished." It was written 
by Bishop Gibson, of London, whose Episcopate 
extended from 1723 to 1748. 

There remain only the sermonettes of the Book. 
With regard to those in the Office for Prisoners, the 



70 THE LIFE TO COME. 

Simple Question is, Shall we exalt — not the canons, 
but the preaching of a Provincial Synod, to the level 
of Ecumenical creeds, or Catholic liturgies ? Are they 
exempt from criticism ? 

Anything less Spurgeonesque than the eschatol- 
ogy of the Prayer Book cannot be found. 

I leave what has been said, to the Judgment of 
the Reader. The Prayer Book is not perfect. If 
here and there, we find an expression we would like 
to see removed, it is better frankly to avow it. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE OPPOSITIONS OF SCRIPTURE. 

1 ' I turn again to the Scriptures, but I cannot find 
that I am able, even after every effort, to combine 
all these sayings naturally, and without any artifice 
of interpretation (what a happy phrase that is), 
into any one clear and determinate picture of the 
future life and its rewards and punishments. Rather 
I see many of their teachings, as I see the colors of 
a painter on his palette : they are all true colors; 
they will all be needed ; but I do not, now at least, see 
them combined and harmonized, as I shall hope to 
do, when the Divine Idealist shall have finished His 
picture of human history, and it shall be unveiled 
at last, in that Day of Revelation, ready for the 
Judgment." Such are the wise words of Professor 
Newman Smyth, and they are in line with the 
views that will now be expressed. 

I spoke of a criticism of part of Mr. Chambers' 
book. It is this: He has brought into strong light 
the passages which make for annihilation; but he 
has dismissed Universalism summarily, by the quota- 
tion of a few texts, culled, as he says, out of a very 
large number of passages, "Good were it for that 
man if he had never been born " (S. Mark, xiv: 21). 
(71) 



72 THE LIFE TO COME. 

1 ' He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost 
hath never forgiveness" (S. Mark, Hi: 29). "He 
that believeth not on the Son, shall not see life" 
(S. John, iii: 36). The Apostolic writers threaten 
impenitent sinners, with Everlasting destruction 
(2 Thess., i: 9), and death unto death (2 Cor., ii: 16). 
Now, Universalists have not a few teachings of 
Scripture, which they contend make for their side; 
and we shall only retard the solution of the ques- 
tion by refusing to look at them. They may be 
divided into several groups: First, we have those 
which distinctly affirm, that the end sought to be 
effected by Our Lord's Mission, was the salvation 
of the World. They declare, that "He taketh 
away the Sin of the World" (S. John, i: 29); that 
"He is the Saviour of the World" (1 S. John, iv: 
14) ; " The propitiation for the sins of the Whole 
World" (1 S. John, ii: 2); "the Saviour of all men, 
especially of them that believe" (1 Tim., iv: 19); 
that "the Grace of God hath appeared, bringing 
Salvation unto all men" (Titus, ii: 11); that "He 
came to seek and to save that which was lost" 
(S. Luke, xix: 10); " Who will have all men to be 
saved" (1 Tim., ii: 4). If it be objected that this 
Will of God may be frustrated by man, He says, 
" I, if I be lifted up from the Earth, will draw all 
men unto Me" (S. John, xii: 32). So, "Having 
made known unto us the mystery of His will, 



THE OPPOSITIONS OF SCRIPTURE. 73 

according to His good pleasure which He hath pur- 
posed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the 
fullness of times, He might gather together in one 
all things in Christ, both which are in Heaven, and 
which are in earth" (Eph., i: 9-10). Can this 
Divine purpose and will be defeated ? 

Another passage, which we may fairly quote, is 
this: "He shall send Jesus Christ, which before 
was preached unto you, whom the Heavens must 
receive until the times of restitution of all things ' ' 
(Acts, iii : 20-21). The noun translated "restitu- 
tion," is used nowhere else in the New Testament, 
and the only place in which the verb is used is in S. 
Mark, xvii: 10, " Elias truly shall first come and 
restore all things." The word is defined a 
"restitution or restoration of anything to its 
former state, hence, change from worse to better ; 
melioration, introduction of a new and better era." 
It has its parallel in the new Heaven and the new 
Earth of 2 S. Peter, iii: 12. "It does not necessarily 
involve, as some have thought, the final Salvation of 
all men, but it does express the idea of a state, in 
which righteousness, and not sin, shall have domin- 
ion over a redeemed and recreated world." 

But this is not their strongest point. That, it has 
always seemed to me, is to be found in the Epistle 
to the Romans (v. 18-21). We must insert the 
definite article "the," before the word "many," 



74 THE LIFE TO COME. 

and must remember that "the many" means all 
men — all mankind. " But not as is the offence, so 
also is the free gift. For if, through the offence of 
one, the many be dead, much more the Grace of God, 
and the gift by Grace, which is by One man, Jesus 
Christ, hath abounded unto the many. Therefore, 
as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all 
men, unto condemnation, even so, by the righteous- 
ness of one, the free Gift came upon all men, unto 
justification of life. For, as by one man's disobedi- 
ence, the many were made sinners, so by the obedi- 
ence of One, shall the many be made righteous. 
Moreover, the law entered that the offence might 
abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much 
more abotcnd ; that, as sin hath reigned unto death, 
even so might grace reign through righteousness 
unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ, our Lord." 
The " all men " of verse 18 are evidently the same 
as " the many " of verse 19. He is establishing the 
relation between the sin brought into the world by 
Adam, and the counteracting salvation effected by 
our Lord ; and his point plainly is, that the restora- 
tive effect of the latter, so far from falling short of 
the ruinous effect of the former, exceeds it. " Much 
more shall the Grace of God abound unto the many." 
Finally, "And when all things shall be subdued 
unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject 
unto Him, that put all things under Him, that God 



THE OPPOSITIONS OF SCRIPTURE. 75 

may be all in all " — all things in all men. (i Cor., 
xv. 28). 

Enough has been quoted to show that the Univer- 
salist has much to say for himself. If these words 
of S. Paul had nothing to oppose them, I should 
say they were final. But we must read not only the 
Scriptures that look the other way, but also the 
book of human life ; and, so reading, I, for one, 
cannot say that the question is settled in favor of 
Universalism. 

We stand in a much better position for the even- 
tual ascertainment of the truth, than did our 
fathers. Fifty years ago, had a theological professor 
been lecturing to his class, the exigencies of his 
position would have required him to dispose of these 
texts. His orthodoxy would have been impeached, 
had he not done so. He dared not take an all- 
around view. He would have been forced to read 
endless punishment into them ; just as the Prince- 
ton Professor, of whom Bishop Clark speaks, read 
Calvinism into the text, "He is the Propitiation 
for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the 
sins of the whole world," Making it mean, "He 
died not only for the Elect among the Jews, but 
also for the Elect among the Gentiles." On this 
principle, as Bishop Butler says, "Anything can be 
made of anything." 

Now there are two ways of treating this opposition. 



~6 THE LIFE TO COME. 

The first is that of Bishop Westcott, who, under 
the Article of the Creed, the life everlasting, in his 
work, "The Historic Faith," writes thus, "But 
two thoughts, bearing upon the future, find ex- 
pression in the New Testament. The one is, of the 
consequences of unrepented sin, as answering to the 
sin ; the other, of a final unity, in which God shall 
be all in all. We read of an Eternal sin, of a sin 
which hath never forgiveness, in this world, nor in 
the world to come; of a debt incurred, of which the 
payment, to be rigidly exacted, exceeds all imagina- 
ble resources of the debtor; of eternal destruction, of 
the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not 
quenched. And, on the other hand, we read of the 
purpose, the good pleasure of God, to sum up all 
things in Christ, and through Him to reconcile all 
things unto Himself, whether things on the earth, 
or things in the heavens, of the bringing to naught 
the last enemy, death, and the final subjection of 
all things to God. 

" Moreover, it must be added, these apparently 
antithetical statements, correspond with two modes 
of regarding the subject from the side of reason. If 
we approach it from the side of man, we see that, 
in themselves, the consequences of actions, appear to 
be for the doer, like the deed, indestructible ; and 
also that the finite freedom of the individual appears 
to include the possibility of final resistance to God. 



THE OPPOSITIONS OF SCRIPTURE. 77 

And again, if we approach it from the Divine side, 
it seems to be an inadmissible limitation of the Infi- 
nite Love of God that a human will should forever 
refuse to yield to it, in complete self-surrender, when 
it is known as love. 

"If we are called upon to decide which of these 
two thoughts of Scripture most prevail, we can hardly 
doubt that that which is most comprehensive, that 
which reaches farthest, contains the ruling idea, and 
that is the idea of a final, Divine unity. How it 
will be reached, we are utterly unable to say ; but 
we are sure that the manner, which has not been 
revealed, will be in perfect harmony with the justice 
of God, and the obligations of man's responsibility. 
More than this we dare not lay down. But that end 
the end rises before us, as the strongest motive, and 
the most certain encouragement in all the labors of 
the life of faith." 

The other method of viewing these diverse utter- 
ances is that of the Danish theologian, Martensen, as 
quoted by Plumptre. The Dean says: "As regards 
this further question, whether we may look beyond 
this possibility of change to the actual restoration of 
all moral beings, Martensen' s language is singularly 
calm and temperate. He says: "The Church has 
never ventured upon this inquiry. The Christian 
consciousness of salvation, in all its fullness, would 
lose its deepest reality, were the doctrine of eternal 



78 THE LIFE TO COME. 

condemnation surrendered. It must, however, be 
allowed that the opposite doctrine of universal resto- 
ration has been espoused at various periods in the 
history of the Church; and, moreover, that it too 
finds some foundation and sanction in the language 
of Holy Scripture; that it has not always sprung 
from levity, but from a deep conviction of humanity; 
a conviction growing out of the very essence of 
Christianity. We have full warrant for saying, 
therefore, that the more deeply Christian thought 
searches into this question, the more does it discover 
an ANTINOMY, i.e., an apparent contradiction 
between two laws, equally divine, which it seems 
cannot find a perfectly conclusive and satisfactory 
solution in the present stage ; the earthly limits of 
human knowledge." 

Now, of these two ways of looking at this ques- 
tion, it appears to me that the latter is the sounder. 
Bishop Westcott's view is, in fact, though he does 
not use the word, Universalism; it is giving the 
same effect to Universalist authorities as if there was 
nothing to oppose them. It is making Universal 
Restoration not the ruling, but the only, idea of 
Scripture. It is the Aaron's rod which swallows up 
all the rest. It is the applying that narrowness of 
interpretation to Scripture which, taking certain 
passages to the exclusion of the rest, is, and always 
has been, a fruitful source of error. It is committing, 



THK OPPOSITIONS OF SCRIPTURE. 79 

on one extreme, precisely the same error which 
the damnatory Eschatology was guilty of on the 
other. In the very Epistle to the Romans which 
contains this unqualified parallel of salvation and 
condemnation, we also find a line of argument, 
which, taken by itself, supports the strictest decrees 
of Calvinism. "As it is written, Jacob have I 
loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say 
then ? Is there unrighteousness with God ? God 
forbid. For He saith to Moses, I will have mercy 
on whom I will have mercy; and I will have com- 
passion on whom I will have compassion. So then, 
it is not of him that willeth, or of him that runneth, 
but of God that showeth mercy. For the Scripture 
saith unto Pharoah, Even for this same purpose 
have I raised thee up: that I might show my power 
in thee, and that my Name might be declared 
throughout all the earth. Therefore hath He mercy 
on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will 
He hardeneth " (Rom.ix: 13-18). The Calvinist 
has just as much right to say that this is the "ruling 
idea" of S. Paul, and that his prediction of an 
Universal Restoration is a subordinate idea, to be 
governed by it, as he has who lays exclusive stress 
upon this prediction to say the reverse. 

Bishop Westcott says: "If we are called upon to 
decide, which of these two thoughts of Scripture 
must prevail?" Herein seems to me to be the 



So THE LIFE TO COME. 

mistake — we may say the double mistake, i. It is 
unsound philosophy to say that of two facts or truths, 
each admitted to be such, one must prevail. 2. To 
assume that we are "called upon to decide " the 
question at all. 

The fact is, that these oppositions of Scripture are 
not exceptions to the laws, which are laws both of 
mind and matter, but are illustrations of them. 
Every truth, it has been well said, has its counter- 
truth. Every truth has its positive and its negative 
pole. Every truth is an hemisphere, and seeks its 
companion hemisphere before it can be made perfect. 

The variant language of S. Paul and S. James 
with reference to faith and works is a Scriptural il- 
lustration. ' 'What shall we say, then, that Abraham, 
our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found ? 
For if Abraham was justified by works, he hath 
whereof to glory, but not before God. For what 
saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God, and 
it was accounted unto him for righteousness " 
(Romans iv : 13). " Was not Abraham, our father, 
justified by works when he had offered Isaac, his 
son, upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought 
with his works, and by works was faith made per- 
fect. And the Scripture was fulfilled, which saith, 
Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto 
him for righteousness, and he was called the Friend 
of God. Ye see, then, how that by works a man is 



THE OPPOSITIONS OF SCRIPTURE. 8 1 

justified, and not by faith only." (St. James ii : 21- 
24). The very same words are used by S. Paul to 
prove that Abraham was not justified by works 
which S. James employs to show that he was justified 
by works. Can we say that either of them has the 
ruling idea ? 

The apparent opposition between God's predeter- 
mination and man's free will may be cited. Sanday, 
commenting on Romans ix., says : " If we follow 
this train of thought, then it would certainly appear 
that God, or the chain of natural circumstances set 
in motion and directed by God, made him what he 
is. In other words, he is elected and predetermined 
to a certain line of conduct. This is the logic of one 
set of inferences. On the other hand, the logic of 
the other set of inferences is just as strong : that man 
is free. 

"There is an opposition irreconcilable to us 
with our present means of judging. We can only 
take the one proposition as qualified by the 
other." 

Indeed, we may find an illustration in the manner 
in which the highest mystery of the Christian Faith, 
the Incarnation, is spoken of by our Lord Himself : 
" I and my Father are one." (Substance) : " My 
Father is greater than I." If we strike out the for- 
mer we deny His Eternal Godhead. If we cancel 
the latter we deny that He is " inferior to the Father 



82 THE LIFE TO COME. 

as touching His Manhood." We cannot say that 
either is the ruling idea. 

Sb it is in mechanics. We have the centripetal 
and centrifugal forces. We have attraction and 
repulsion. We could not think of saying that the 
revolution of the earth round the sun was the ruling 
idea of its motion, which must eventually overcome 
its rotation on its axis; or that day and night, the 
result of the latter, is a motion inferior to summer 
and winter, the effect of the former; or that in some 
way unknown to us the former is to swallow up the 
latter. 

If the rotation were to cease, and either day or 
night be no more, we should soon give up this way 
of speaking. Nothing is better known in mechanics 
than the resultant of two opposing forces. Now 
then, it appears to me, we are to wait for the revela- 
tion of the resultant of these opposite forces of salva- 
tion and condemnation. Our predecessors have 
committed the mistake of ignoring the former. Let 
us not fall into the opposite error of silencing the 
latter. 

Or may it be that we have a picture made up of 
the ideal and the actual. The Scripture writers 
sometimes idealize. The first eight verses of S, 
Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians present a 
picture of the ideal Church, the remainder describe 
the actual— a. very different one. The fiftieth Psalm, 



THE OPPOSITIONS OF SCRIPTURE. 



83 



and the. first chapter of Isaiah, call Israel God's peo- 
ple, and proceed to accuse them of the most flagrant 
sins. Thus the universalism of the Bible may 
describe the ideal future. That may require to be 
qualified by the sterner side before we reach the 
actual. 

Look at these two verses of the Book of Proverbs, 
standing side by side : 



" Answer not a fool accord- 


" Answer a fool according 


ing to his folly, lest thou be 


to his folly, lest he be wise 


like unto him." — Prov. xxxi: 


in his own conceit." — Prov. 


4- 


xxxi: 5. 



Prefaced to many of Lord Bacon's Essays is a series 
of " Antitheta," or opposite maxims on the sub- 
ject of the essay. Being thus opposed to each other, 
we are put upon inquiry as to the Restcltant. Here 
are a few : 

Riches. 
Pro. Con. 

Riches are despised by Riches are neither more 

those who despair of obtain- nor less than the baggage of 



ing them. 

While philosophers are de- 
bating whether virtue or 
pleasure be the ultimate 
good, do you provide yourself 
with the instruments of both. 

It is by means of wealth 
that virtue becomes a public 
good. 



virtue, for they are at once 
necessary and inconvenient 
appendages to it. Many who 
think that everything can be 
bought with their own wealth 
have been bought themselves 
first. 

Wealth is a good handmaid, 
but a bad mistress. 



8 4 



THE LIFE TO COME. 



Nobility. 

Pro. 

High birth is the wreath 
with which men are crowned 
by time. 

We reverence antiquity in 
lifeless monuments, how 
much more in living ones. 

Nobility withdraws virtue 
from envy and commends it 
to favor. 



Con. 

Nobility has rarely sprung 
from virtue, virtue still more 
rarely from nobility. 

Persons of high birth 
oftener resort to their ances- 
tors as a means of escaping 
punishment than as a recom- 
mendation to high posts. 

Such is the activity of new 
men that men of high birth 
seem statues in comparison. 

In running their race men 
of high birth look back too 
often, which is a sign of a 
bad runner. 

Since writing this chapter I have come upon the 
following words of Bishop Wordsworth, of S. 
Andrew's, Scotland ijwt of Lincoln), which are a 
fitting conclusion : ' ' Perhaps a careful study of the 
Gospels and Epistles teaches one to think that there 
are, if I may so say, two parallel lines of revelation, 
which can never meet in this world, but will meet, 
we humbly trust, in the world to come." The ques- 
tion really amounts to this : Is sin an episode in the 
history of the world, or is it a fixed fact? 



CHAPTER IV. 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 

The reader may be disappointed at the caution 
and the want of positiveness which have been shown 
in the preceding chapters, and may think that I 
have nothing definite to set before him as the result 
of all. I shall now show that what has been said 
leads to definite conclusions. In some cases they 
will be merely stated. In others there will be com- 
ment or enlargement upon them. 

The remark is eminently applicable to this subject 
that not only the intimations of Scripture, but the 
principles of justice and right, which are written by 
the Finger of God in the human heart, are an 
authority on this as on all questions. 

We ought not to be called to "go to the Bible" 
for proof of them. They are features of the Image 
of God, in which He made man, and they need no 
authority of a Book. When some doctrine is pressed 
upon us, on the authority of the Bible, which is at 
variance with our fundamental moral ideas, we may 
be sure that the Bible is misused. Faith, as under- 
stood by some persons, means the assent to a tenet 
which shocks and outrages our sense of right ; and 
the greater the shock, the greater the faith is 
(85) 



86 THE LIFE TO COME. 

supposed to be. The principle is sanctioned by our 
Lord Himself: " Yea, and why even of yourselves, 
judge ye not that which is right." 

i. Reason, Scripture, and analogy go to show, 
that this life, and the intermediate state, form parts 
of one system ; and that the work of acting upon 
human souls goes on behind, as well as before the 
veil. Time and History do not come to an end, 
until the Day of Judgment. 

2. Although this life is the probation for the next, 
and therefore " the deeds done in the body " are of 
prime importance in determining, and in some 
cases are probably conclusive in determining man's 
condition hereafter, yet, in many cases, owing to 
defective education, or environment, or from physi- 
cal causes, there has not been in this life any fair 
trial of what a man is, or opportunity of developing 
his moral powers. This imperfect condition cannot 
in justice determine the issues of endless happiness, 
or misery. 

3. A man may, by the life he has led, or the 
errors he has entertained here, sustain an irreparable 
loss hereafter, and yet he may be saved : " Yet so 
as by fire " — that is, as one is saved who escapes 
for his life out of a burning building. (1 Cor. iii : 
11-15. 

We cannot quit this point without saying some- 
thing of the so-called "Parable of the Rich Man 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCISIONS. 87 

and L,azarus. ' ' There are many difficulties of detail 
in its interpretation, partly arising from the fact that 
it uses the Jewish traditions of the day, as the 
organ of instruction, and partly, no doubt, from 
the Divine depth of meaning. 

There is a sharp dividing-line between the inter- 
pretation of the old school of commentators, such as 
Wordsworth and Alford, and the advocates of the 
larger hope. The former represent the condition 
of Dives as hopeless, and consider that condition to 
be the vestibule of Gehenna. Kingsley, Gurney, 
Chambers, and presumably Maurice, represent him 
as undergoing purifying suffering, and as eventually 
to be saved. If we are frightened at the word ' ' Pur- 
gatory ' ' there is an end of the matter. So long as 
people will be terrified by a word, and refuse to 
look at the thing, the case is hopeless. 

After anxious consideration it appears to me that 
he was suffering the inevitable repentance of those 
who hereafter feel the irreparable loss of opportunity 
here; that without presuming to give this as 
the explanation, such repentance might well be 
described as being tormented in this flame; that 
good had not by any means died out within him; 
that his desire to send Lazarus to warn his brethren 
is evidence of the awakening of such good; that out 
of this, that moral change, which is Salvation, is in 
Course of Evolution, but that he never can be saved 



88 THE LIFE TO COME. 

as the rich man is saved who has used his riches and 
the power given him for the good of his fellow men 
and the glory of God. 

I do not see that this is an attractive picture nor 
an encouragement to any living Dives to act, as did 
his predecessor, now in Hades. And the number of 
those who are sharing his fate, or are on the way to 
share it, is, it is to be feared, not small. Translated 
into plain English it means all those who are living 
a life of selfish enjoyment. Of course, there may 
come a time when, by the continuance of this life, 
all capacity for good is lost; and then, even the Sal- 
vation of Dives cannot be hoped for. 

The interpretation which has been received by a cer- 
tain school, and which was once mentioned to me 
with as positive an assurance as if it had fallen upon 
the interpreter from the skies, was this: " Do you 
know why the rich man desired to send Lazarus to 
warn his brethren? It is because he knew their 
presence would increase his own suffering." 

Upon this I have no comment to make. My own 
interpretation, I am given to understand, was, in 
substance, that of the late Rev. Dr. Mahan — very 
high authority indeed: — " clarum et venerabilc 
nomen." It is but fair, however, to mention that 
there is no analogy in Rabbinic writings to the 
statement that " there is a great gulf fixed," between 
the two. So says Edersheim. 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 89 

4. But, I think that a man by a course of deliber- 
ate selfishness, which is the root-sin, but takes many 
shapes, as covetousness, lust, lying and causing 
others to sin, may so harden himself in this life as to 
become " past feeling" and actually to extinguish 
all sense of the difference between right and wrong, 
the light that is in him having become darkness. 
There is a mysterious law known as " the enhance- 
ment of sin." " If a man shall have so sundered 
himself from the stock of his humanity as to join 
himself to the evils against which he was called 
into being to contend, then it is reasonable to believe 
that his lot will be the same as those with whom he 
has so joined himself." May not this loss of the 
sense of difference between right and wrong be 
the sin against the Holy Ghost which hath never 
forgiveness ? It hath never forgiveness because the 
sinner has deprived himself of the power of repent- 
ance, and he cannot repent, because, by his own act, 
he has deprived himself of the power of seeing his 
sin. 

' ' We have nowhere, ' ' says Mr. Chambers, ' ' taught 
in these pages that one who has persistently closed 
his eyes to truth and, in opposition to conscience, 
resolutely practiced evil, will be capable of Salva- 
tion after death." 

No victory was ever gained in this world's bat- 
tles without loss of life. Are we not led to think it 



90 THE LIFK TO COME\ 

probable that the great and final victory over evil 
will not be achieved without an analogous spiritual 
loss ? Nevertheless 

5. Endless existence in penal suffering, which is 
what is commonly meant by " Everlasting Punish- 
ment," is not "An Article of the Christian Faith as 
contained either in the Apostles' or Nicene Creed/' 
not being included in nor deducible from the Life 
Everlasting (Eternal) of the former, or the Life of 
World to Come of the latter. 

6. The " iEonian " controversy, as it is called, 
turns on the question whether the word, sometimes 
translated Everlasting and sometimes Eternal (in S. 
Matt, xxv : 46, it is the same word in the original, 
" These shall go away into Everlasting punishment, 
but the righteous into YiizEtemal") denotes Endless- 
ness. Etymologically, it certainly does not. The 
"aeon" is the period of existence of any person, 
thing or institution. The hills and mountains are 
called everlasting, although there was a time when 
they were not, and there shall come a time when 
they shall cease to be. The "aeon" of the ephe- 
meron, the insect of a day, is the one day which sees 
it born and sees it die. God said of circumcision, 
' ' My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlast- 
ing covenant, ' ' where the same word is used in the 
Septuagint, as in the Gospel, yet we know 
that circumcision has long been abolished. 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 9 1 

The word does not and cannot of itself de- 
note endlessness. I will go further and say 
that it has been used for this very reason. I 
base this statement upon the fact that there are 
words which do have this meaning, unmistakably. 
Is it too much to say that they have been avoided ? 
The use of any one of them would have settled the 
question in regard to the endlessness of punishment. 

Such words are ai'Sto?, artipavfof, axa?d%vto$. The 
first is used in Romans i: 20, " His eternal power and 
Godhead." The second in 1 Tim. i: 4, "Neither give 
heed to fables and endless genealogies" (the word 
signifies that beyond which there is nothing). The 
third is used in Hebrew vii : 16, where our L,ord is 
said to be made, not after the law of a carnal com- 
mandment, but after the power of an endless (indis- 
soluble) life. I do not, however, consider this as a 
question of prime importance. The matter can 
never be settled by a word. But thus much the 
discussion can accomplish: to show that philology 
lends no countenance to the opinion of the endless- 
ness of punishment, but leaves the question to be 
determined on other grounds. 

7. "The annihilation of the wicked after the Day 
of Judgment, by the Second Death, commonly called 
'conditional immortality,' has arguments in its 
favor of no small force, but it lacks the conclusive- 
ness of proof." 



92 THK UFK TO COME:. 

So I had written eight years ago, and the words 
are allowed to stand, for the very reason that I am 
about to modify them. It is an illustration of the 
tentative, gradual way in which one's mind is led 
on about this deep subject. It appears to me more 
and more likely to be true. 

It is remarkable how writers differ on this point 
while agreeing on some others. Dean Plumptre 
disbelieves it entirely, argues against it elabor- 
ately, and concludes : " Whatever support this 
view may derive from a narrow and almost servile 
literalism in its interpretation of Scripture, it must 
be rejected as at variance with the intuitive beliefs 
which all God's revelation pre-supposes ; at variance 
also with the meaning of Scripture, when we pass 
beyond the letter to the truth which it repre- 
sents." 

And Mr.Gurney, in the same strain : " The theory 
of annihilation, or conditional immortality, is one 
which I do not care to discuss, for I feel persuaded 
that it will never commend itself to the mind and con- 
science of the Spirit-bearing Church. A few men, both 
earnest and able, in ancient and modern times, have 
adopted it. I cannot think they would have done 
so had they not been driven into it as a means of 
escape from the popular teaching about hell, and 
under the impression that the Gospel of Restitution 
is too good to be true." 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 93 

On the other hand, Prebendary Row, as we have 
seen, practically upholds it. But its ardent cham- 
pion is Mr. Chambers, who comes to the conclusion 
unqualifiedly as the alternative to universalism, 
which, as we have seen, he dismisses peremptorily. 
His whole discussion of the subject is very interest- 
ing (pp. 133-144). I^et it be considered : 

(a) Setting aside all questions of the tenet of the 
inherent immortality of the soul being derived from 
the Platonic philosophy, we fall back on S. Paul, 
who teaches us that God only hath immortality 
(deathlessness), (i Tim. vi : 16) ; hath it, that is, 
inherently, essentially. 

(b) We come to this point with the traditional 
interpretation, which makes the passages cited in 
favor of annihilation to mean deathless existence in 
misery, so rooted in us that it is very hard for us to 
biing our minds into an impartial attitude. We 
must first learn to think that it is possible before we 
can receive proof that it is. 

(c) If it be said that we have no evidence of any 
immaterial entity, like the human spirit, being 
destructible, it may be replied that the soul of the 
brute, although a lower order than man, is imma- 
terial, and it is generally believed that it does not 
survive death. And S. Peter (2d Ep. ii : 12) com- 
pares sinners to ' ' natural brute beasts made to be 
taken and destroyed," 



94 THE LIFE TO COME. 

(d) Consider the drift of passages such as these : 
"The ungodly are like the chaff which the wind 
driveth away." (Ps. i : 4.) " Consume into smoke ; 
consume away." (Ps. xxxvii : 20.) "As the whirl- 
wind passeth, so is the wicked no more." (Prov. x : 
25.) Much stronger, " He shall burn up the chaff 
with unquenchable fire." (S. Mat. iv : 12.) "Who- 
soever shall say thou fool, shall be in danger of hell 
fire." (S. Matt, v: 22 ; see also v : 29.) Now Ge- 
henna is the valley of the Son of Hinnom, once 
infamous for the horrid worship of Moloch, and 
afterwards polluted with every kind of filth, as well 
as the dead bodies of malefactors and carcasses of 
animals. In order to consume these, and so avoid 
the pestilence which such a mass of corruption would 
occasion, constant fires were kept burning. It 
was "eternal fire." What is thrown into such a 
receptacle is thrown, not in order that it may con- 
tinue to exist in its corruption, but that it may cease 
to exist altogether. Such, too, is the natural lesson 
of the Parable of the Wheat and Tares. " Gather 
ye together first the tares in bundles to burn them, 
but gather the wheat into my barn." (S. Matt, 
xiii : 30. ) No one who brought his mind to such a 
parable without pre-possession could think that it 
meant that the tares were to continue to exist in the fire. 

But Mr. Chambers has left unquoted the strongest 
proof of all. It is that derived from S. Jude 7 : 
"Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 95 

about them in like manner, giving themselves over 
unto fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set 
forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal 
fire." To suffer that vengeance is not to be kept 
alive in that fire, but to be so completely annihilated 
by it that not a vestige remains. And we are clearly 
to infer that the fate of the sinful city is a parable 
of the fate of the sinful inhabitants. Brick and 
mortar, or their ancient equivalents, have no souls; 
and S. Jude never would have mentioned them, un- 
less as a parable of spiritual things. 

This consideration is greatly strengthened by 
2 S. Pet. ii: 6. " Turning the cities of Sodom and 
Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them with an 
overthrow, making them an example to those that 
after should live ungodly." Here we are distinctly 
taught that the fate of the material Sodom and 
Gomorrah is a symbol of the fate that should befall 
the ungodly. It would be no symbol at all if they 
are to be kept alive in penal misery. 

{e) But by conditional immortality is not meant 
the annihilation of the wicked directly after death. 
Being is not extinguished then. Those who hold it 
maintain that the lost soul continues to exist in suf- 
fering after death, and the " certain, fearful looking 
for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall 
devour (note the word, eat up, it means,) the adversa- 
ries." Says Mr. Chambers: "The Old and New 



96 THE UKE TO COME. 

Testament alike proclaim that at the Judgment some 
will pass into a place or condition of punishment for 
sin. This punishment is expressed in the Greek 
New Testament by the word ' Gehenna,' and in 
the English by ' Hell.' Closely associated with 
this condition of Hell, but quite distinct from it, is 
a subsequent experience, called in the Bible the 
Second Death. This latter is the outcome of the 
former, and bears the same relation to it that bodily 
dissolution does to the mortal physical suffering 
which precedes it." 

Some object to the annihilation of the wicked on 
the ground that it would be a blessing to them. 
They share the feeling of Justin Martyr: "Our 
souls are not immortal, nor uncreated ; yet I say not 
that all souls die ; for that indeed would be a god- 
send to the wicked." It cannot be too often re- 
peated that the question to be asked is not " What 
are the results of truth?" but "What is truth?" 
But the way in which different minds look at im- 
mortality is very different. Some prefer endless 
existence in hell to the being blotted out. And 
there are good Christians to whom the idea of an 
immortal existence is simply intolerable. We must 
have a standard other than these varying feelings. 

(/") There is no reason why those who once never 
had a being should not cease to be ; why that which 
came into existence should woi go out of existence. 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 97 

(g) It seems the natural and just punishment 
that they who have misused existence should be 
punished by forfeiting the existence which they have 
misused. Lastly 

(Ji) Nowhere in the Bible is the soul spoken of 
as an immortal soul, or as having any natural, in- 
herent immortality. In i Cor. xv: 53, we have 
' ' This mortal must put on immortality. ' ' The word 
is in sound as well as sense to "endue." The 
whole drift of the argument goes to show that 
S. Paul is speaking throughout only of the resur- 
rection to life everlasting, and his words mean 
"This mortal must be endued with, immortality," 
which carries out the argument of those who hold 
conditional immortality, that it is the gift of God to 
the saved. 

Archbishop Whately — a master of logic — teaches 
that in every discussion it is of first importance to 
determine on which side the burden of proof lies. 
Now I submit that the assertion that ' ' God only 
hath immortality," puts the onus probandi on those 
who assert the immortality of any creature. Proof 
of this derived immortality is fully furnished in 
regard to the saved. My contention is that it is not 
furnished with regard to the lost. 

I leave this point by quoting some remarkable 
words of Professor Godet of the Theological 
Faculty of Nuchatel, Switzerland: "It is possible 



98 THE LIFE TO COME. 

that there are still in this mysterious matter hidden 
sides, on which we can yet scarcely look. When 
the glass, having passed from the hand of the work- 
man, once cooled off, has taken its fixed form, if 
this does not answer to his intention, he can no 
longer change it. But he does not therefore look on 
the material as lost. Instead of throwing it away 
as vile refuse, he puts it back in the furnace, and 
after having recast it, he seeks to give it the new 
form which shall answer to his thought. Can one 
not imagine something similar with regard to the 
man who has refused to fulfil his destiny ? May 
there not be at the bottom of this ruined personality 
an impersonal human existence which God can take 
back into His hands to draw from it by a subsequent 
development a personality which shall answer to 
his thought? We know so little what being is, 
and what relation there is between the verb being 
and the substantive a being. The most profound 
thinkers have exhausted themselves on this prob- 
lem. . . . It is perhaps at the bottom of this 
abyss that there is hidden the solution of the for- 
midable problem which has occupied our attention." 
8. Men who leave this world in a state of salva- 
tion, that is with the elements of the character 
which God will accept at the Last Day, depart in 
very different degrees or states of preparation; from 
the man who has repented an hour before his death 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 99 

up to the Christian who has served God for a life- 
time. Popular theology, while too severe in one 
aspect, is too lax in another, ignoring the fact that 
a man may die saved, and yet carry away with him 
much evil, the removal of which is a moral neces- 
sity. Dismissing, as both unreasonable and un- 
scriptural, the idea that death effects a sudden 
preparation, we must lay stress upon the work which 
is done in the intermediate state, of fitting the 
departed for heaven. The " good work " has only 
been "begun" here; it must be "performed until 
the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil, i: 6). That day 
can only mean the Day of Judgment. And upon 
the amount that has been done here will depend the 
amount that remains to be done there. If the former 
has been great the latter will be less, and vice versa. 
Not only this ; not only must incomplete good be 
completed, but that which is bad must be unlearned. 
The Christian teacher or priest who has taught 
error, or a false system, must there awaken to a 
sense of the truth, for there can be no deception 
there. The persecution of the truth, in the milder 
modern form as well as in the coarser way, must 
then be fully realized. Prejudice and warped judg- 
ments can no longer be indulged there. Acts of 
injustice (testamentary ones for instance) must be 
seen in their true light, when there is no power of 
recalling them. Failure of duty must be brought 



IOO THK UFE TO COME. 

home to the disembodied spirit, Wrongs, unkind- 
nesses, uncharitableness, in all which not alone the 
''ungodly" offend, done in the body, must stand 
out. I^et the word Purgatory be given up, on 
account of the associations connected with it, but 
let us remember that the early Christian writers, 
and many of later date, unite in asserting the 
necessity of discipline or purification of some sort 
beyond the grave. Archdeacon Farrar and Mr. 
Chambers, neither of whom can be suspected of a 
leaning toward what Article XXII. calls "the 
Romish doctrine of Purgatory," unite in maintain- 
ing this. Farrar and Pusey are at one in holding 
that "short of the sin which hardens finally, there 
may be countless cases of seeming failure, heresies, 
unbelief, that arise from ignorance, prejudice, 
enfeebled and stunted capacities, which yet do not 
exclude men from salvation, and leave them as 
possible subjects for the purifying education, which 
leads up to it." And Mr. Chambers has these wise 
words. After speaking of the mediaeval corrup- 
tions on the subject, he continues, " The foundation 
is Scriptural and good ; but upon that foundation 
men have reared a superstructure of rubbish. If 
it were not so, if there had been no foundation of 
truth, the doctrine of Purgatory would long since 
have ceased to be believed. There are thoughtful 
men to-day who do believe it, though not perhaps 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. IOI 

in its coarser mediaeval representation. And how 
it becomes possible for them to do so, is, that, 
underlying a very great amount of error, is the 
truth, that, in the Hades life there is a woik of 
perfecting and developing. If the word 'Purga- 
tory ' be used only to denote a purging out of 
sin and imperfection, I know of nothing objection- 
able in it. Our Church of England has not a word 
to say against it. What she condemns in her 
XXII. Article is, ' the Romish doctrine concerning 
Purgatory' " (p. 104). 

I add the words of Mr. Maurice in his statement 
of what he did not hold : ' ' Not to invent a scheme 
of Purgatory, and so take upon myself the office of 
the Divine Judge. Not to deny God a right of 
using punishments, at any time, or anywhere for 
the Reformation of His Creatures." 

I venture to quote a few sentences from a sermon 
of my own. They state the question and leave it, 
where God has left it, unsolved in detail. The 
subject is " Heaven : " 

" But there is one difficulty on this subject which 
we ought to face. We read of a home in which all 
is purity. We are told that there shall enter in 
nothing that defileth." The rule has no exception. 
"Without holiness, no man shall see the IyOrd." 
In order to enter Heaven there must be nothing in 
a man in which the eye of God can detect a blemish 



102 THE LIFE TO COME. 

or a flaw And these are they, who, 

as it is said, expect to go to Heaven, and to endure 
a look, and to be happy while it reads them through 
and through, which will draw out of man the 
faintest sin, and make him blush at the smallest 
speck of wrong within. It is character which 
determines our going to Heaven ; nay, it is charac- 
ter which is Heaven, and what is our character ? 
The laborer carried off suddenly in his working 
clothes, from the clod and the plough, to a court 
reception, would not be more ill at ease, than would 
be many a Christian in Heaven. Is it in this earth 
that the fine gold is to be found? Is this the 
material of saints in glory ? 

" But w 7 e know that there are dead who die in the 
Lord, who, from the moment of their death, rest 
from their labors. An4 we know too that our strug- 
gle after purity is not an useless one, for when 
S. Peter bids us give all diligence that we may be found 
of Him in peace, without spot and blameless, he 
teaches us that such diligence will not be in vain. 
. . . Let all such take courage. He will, in His 
own way and time, rid them of all trace of sin ; and 
when they awake up after His likeness they shall be 
satisfied with it." 

What then, it will be asked, is this " doctrina 
Romanensium," which the article condemns; and 
wherein does it differ from what has now been ad- 
vocated ? 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 103 

Some of my readers may have read Tract No. 90 
of the Oxford Tracts. They will recall how the 
future Cardinal Newman, the author of it, claims 
that in condemning the Romish doctrine of purga- 
tory, Article XXII. by implication admits that there 
is a doctrine of purgatory which it does not con- 
demn. The article is as follows: "The Romish 
doctrine concerning purgatory, pardons, worshiping 
and adoration, as well of images, and relics, and 
also invocation of saints, is a fond (foolish) thing, 
vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of 
Scripture, but rather repugnant to the word of God. ' ' 
Pardons are the same as indulgences. This tract 
raised a storm of indignation, and was the occasion 
of the discontinuance of them. The calm and judi- 
cial Dean Church, in his history of the Oxford 
movement, thus comments : ' ' Nothing could exceed 
the scorn poured on the interpretation of the twenty- 
second article ; that it condemns the Roman doc- 
trine of purgatory, but not all doctrines of purgatory, 
as a place of gradual purification beyond death. 
But in our days a school very far removed from that 
of Mr. Newman, would require and would claim to 
make the same distinction." 

I trust the foregoing pages show that the distinc- 
tion is well-founded. It will appear the more so if 
we try to get some idea of the points in which the 
Romish doctrine differs from it. It does so in these : 



104 THE UFE TO COME. 

i. The popular belief, I take it, is that the fire 
which purifies souls is a material one. It has not 
been so pronounced ex cathedra, but such a theolo- 
gian as Bellarmine holds that the fire is corporeal. A 
belief, this, not so objectionable as that of Mr. Spur- 
geon, as quoted in Chapter I. of Endless Flames. 

2. The Romish doctrine holds to a Quantitative 
Satisfaction for sins committed in this life : with the 
" superfluous ' ' merits of the saints, those which were 
more than enough to secure their own salvation, ap- 
plied to the remission of the sins of others. It is 
thus connected with works of supererogation which 
Article XIX. condemns. It will be seen what a ten- 
dency this has to bring in that invocation of saints 
and worshiping of images and relics which the 
article condemns. The following passage from 
Shakespeare explains a " quantitative " satisfaction. 
It is taken from the prayer of King Henry V, just 
before the battle of Agincourt : 

4 • Not to-day, O Lord, 

0, not to-day, think not upon the fault 
My father made, in compassing the crown. 

1, Richard's body have interred new 

And on it have bestowed more contrite tears 
Than from it issued, forced drops of blood. 
Two hundred poor I have in yearly pay, 
Who twice a day their withered hands hold up 
Toward heaven, to pardon blood : and I have built 
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests, 
Still sing for Richard's soul. ' ' 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. IO5 

Then he changes into a truer strain : 

1 ' More will I do, 
Though all that I can do is nothing worth, 
Since that my penitence comes after all, 
Imploring pardon." — Act iv., scene /. 

3. The system of indulgences in remission of the 
temporal penalties of sin, including in the word 
' ■ temporal ' ' those of a purgatory between death 
and resurrection, Bishop Browne, on the articles 
(p. 503) quoting Cardinal Bellarmine, says : "It is 
held that the Bishop of Rome has a store or treasure 
of the merits of Christ and of the saints, which for 
sufficient reasons he can dispense, either by himself 
or his agents, to mitigate or shorten the sufferings 
of penitents, whether in this world or the world to 
come ; meaning by ' the world to come ' the period 
between death and resurrection. ' ' In other words, a 
system of suffering is created for the purification of 
the sinner, and then an elaborate system is built 
upon it for the deliverance of the soul from that suf- 
fering, and so for the frustration of the very object 
of it. 

A Prayer, issued by authority, is worth more, as 
a proof of actual practice, than an abstract decree of 
a Council. It bears the ( ' Reimprimatur " of the 
late Archbishop Wood, and is taken from the "Vade 
Mecum." 



106 THE LIFE TO COME. 

PRAYERS FOR OBTAINING PLENARY INDULGENCE. 
PREPARATORY PRAYER. 

Almighty and Everlasting God, I trust, that by 
Thy Mercy, I am absolved from all my sins, and 
delivered from Eternal damnation ; yet since I am 
still obnoxious to the temporal punishment due 
my sins, and my own works are not sufficient to 
make satisfaction for them, I fly to the inexhausti- 
ble, treasury of the merits of Thy Only-begotten 
Son, and of the saints, that by their abundance my 
defects and infirmities may be supplied. I cheer- 
fully offer myself to do all those things which are 
appointed for this End. Receive them, O Father 
of Mercies, in union with the Passion and Death of 
the same, Thy Son, and make me, although 
unworthy, partaker of this plenary indulgence. 

Our Father. Hail Mary. 

There is the following foot note to this Prayer : 

" For obtaining the Indulgences, it is sufficient to 
to say with devotion, five Our Fathers, and five 
Hail Marys, but the following are the forms com- 
monly used. They are applicable, either to those 
who use them, or to the Souls in' Purgatory ; and 
may be said, either at the time of the Jubilee, or 
any other occasion." 

I add this Preface to a Prayer in the same con- 
nection : "Prayer, to which is annexed a plenary 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 107 

indulgence applicable to the souls in Purgatory, 
which all the faithful may obtain, who, after having 
confessed their sins with contrition, receive the 
Holy Communion, and pray for the intentions of 
the Sovereign Pontiff, shall devoutly recite it, before 
an image, or representation of Christ crucified." 

Much of the contents of this little book is admir- 
able, but from these extracts, there can be no doubt 
what its doctrine of Purgatory is. 

9. This last topic brings us closely up to that of 
Prayers for the Dead. Let us look at the subject 
historically. 

The history, with which the Second Book of the 
Maccabees deals, is that of nearly two centuries 
before Christ. It is the history of the resistance of 
the Jews, under their Maccabean leaders, to the 
idolatrous tyranny of Antiochus Kpiphanes. Here, 
for the first time, we meet the belief in what we find 
in the Canonical Scriptures only occasionally, and 
in faint hints; but which, in its clearness of expres- 
sion, anticipates almost the very words of the Chris- 
tian creed, "A Resurrection unto Everlasting I^ife." 
The sudden emergence of this truth is striking, 
indeed startling. It is said of one of the seven brethren 
who were martyred for refusing to eat swine's flesh, 
And when he was at the last gasp, he said, Thou, 
like a fury, takest us out of this present life, but the 
' *Ki7ig of the world shall raise us up who have died 



Io8 THE LIFE TO COME. 

for His law unto everlasting life.'' 1 2 Mace, vii : 9. 
And this hope was enough to sustain them under 
the most horrible tortures. No one of the Saints of 
the Old Testament speaks in this way. It is not in 
my line to discuss the reason of this sudden clari- 
fying of the future. But what I do want to impress 
is this, that, along with this firm faith in the Life of 
the World to Come, the belief also comes, "that 
that life is not shut out from fellowship with this." 
The defenders of their country, under the leader- 
ship of Judas Maccabees, were slain in battle. 
And, with the Jew, patriotism was religion. But it 
was found that ' ' under the coats of every one that 
was slain were things consecrated to the idols of the 
Jamnites." The temptation had been too great for 
them. They had given their lives for God and 
their country, and yet, in the act of doing so, had 
broken His Commandment. Good and Evil were 
mingled in them, as they are in us all. What 
then ? All men, praising the Lord, the Righteous 
Judge, who had opened the things that were hid, 
besought the Lord, that the sin committed, might 
be wholly put out of remembrance. For if he had 
not hoped that they that were slain, should have risen 
again, it had been superfluous and vain, to pray for 
the dead, 2 Mace, xii : 40-44. In other words, and 
what can be more important — the first clear statement 
in fewish History of a belief in the Resurrection of the 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 109 

Dead, is accompanied by a belief in the efficacy of 
Prayers for the Dead. If it be said, that this is not 
Canonical Scripture, I answer : That does not in 
the least invalidate the Historical argument. 

And this belief, thus held nearly two hundred 
years before the birth of our Lord, was in full force 
in His time. Yet while He withered, with the 
breath of His mouth, all the corruptions and super- 
stitions that were current in His day, He never said 
one word in rebuke of this, which was the belief of 
all, except of the Sadducees who believed, that 
there was no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit. 
Even the Jewish training of S. Paul would prompt 
the prayer for his friend Onesiphorus (who, the 
whole passage, plainly shows, had died). "The 
Lord grant unto him, that he may find mercy of the 
Lord, in that day." (2 Tim. i : 18.) 

It would have seemed as strange a thing to the 
Early Christians to reject Prayers for the Dead, as 
it does to many in the present day, to make use ol 
them. It is not necessary to enlarge upon the dis- 
favor, which they encountered at the Reformation, 
on account of the abuses which were associated with 
them. They are retained in the Eucharistic and 
Burial offices of the First Prayer Book of Edward 
VI — that marvellous Book, which, yielding to no 
reactionary outcries, retained what was truly Cath- 
olic, rejecting the additions to, and corruptions 



HO THE LIFE TO COME. 

of it. The Protestant recoil, combined with politi- 
cal motives, are sufficient to account for the effort to 
remove these Prayers altogether from the Second 
Book. Yet it ought to be borne in mind, that in 
the draft of the Articles of 1552 (the date of the Sec- 
ond Prayer Book), prayers for the Dead, which had 
been included with Purgatory, in the condemnatory 
language of Article XXII. were omitted from cen- 
sure on that Revision. The more deliberate judg- 
ment of the framers of that Article was, that it was 
not expedient to identify them with Purgatory, nor 
to declare them to be ' ' repugnant to the Word of 
God." 

There have not been wanting those (as the Com- 
mentator on the Liturgy in the Annotated Prayer 
Book), who see in the clause of the Prayer for the 
Church Militant, " beseeching Thee to give us grace 
so to follow their good examples, that with them, 
we may be partakers of Thy Heavenly Kingdom," 
a Prayer for the Departed. I cannot think so. In 
the First Book, the Title of the Prayer was, "Let 
us pray for the Estate of Christ's Church." And 
the Comprehensiveness of the Title was justified by 
the fact, that it contained a Prayer for the Departed. 
Nothing could be more significant than the change 
of title in the Second Book, "Let us pray for the 
whole state of Chris f s Church Milita?it here in Earth. ' ' 
The body of the Prayer carries out the Title, by 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. Ill 

omitting the petition for those who are gone. We 
must remark also, that the Prayer of the First Book 
runs, ' ' We and all they that be of the Mystical 
Body of Thy Son. ' ' When the Book took its present 
shape, in the Prayer Book of Charles II (the present 
Book of the Church of England), we find the word 
" with," instead of "and." "That we with them 
may be partakers." It appears to me that the 
change would not have been made had it not been 
with the intention of altering the meaning. 

It would be uncandid to evade these considera- 
tions ; but there are certainly four places in the 
Prayer Book, which either escaped observation or 
being observed, were allowed to remain. One of 
them, indeed, could not have been erased. Two are 
in the Iyitany. " Remember not, O Lord, our ini- 
quities, nor the iniquities of our forefathers." It 
may be said, that we mean by this to deprecate the 
effects of the sins of our ancestors, being visited on 
us, their descendants. It will then mean, "Re- 
member the sins of our forefathers, for the purpose 
of punishing them : but forget them, when it comes 
to visiting them upon us. ' ' If any can put up such 
a prayer, I must leave him to offer it alone. 

"That it may please Thee to have mercy upon 
all men." Can we confine this to the fraction of 
the human race now living in the world ? Or, can 
we say, that if we begin a prayer by a dying bed, 



112 THE LIFE TO COME. 

and before we have ended it, the spirit has left the 
body, our petitions must be silenced, and become 
useless, if not indeed, sinful ? * 

Again, in the Communion office, we pray "that 
we and all Thy whole Church, may obtain remission 
of our sins, and all other benefits of His Passion." 
Beside, the "and" being used, epithet is piled upon 
epithet in order that no portion of that Church may 
be shut out from the benefit of those Prayers. It is 
not "Thy Church," but " All Thy Church." Not 
only "All Thy Church," but "All Thy Whole 
Church." Language is exhausted, in order that 
the Church in Paradise may be included in those 
Prayers : which are especially in place when offered 
in connection with the sacrifice of the altar. 

And lastly : We cannot banish Prayers for the 
dead, unless we exclude the Lord's Prayer. So long 
as we put up the petition, " Thy Kingdom come," 
we pray that God would hasten His kingdom: S. 
Peter bids us hasten (not hasten unto) the coming 
of the Day of God. We pray for the Church ex- 
pectant, or waiting in Paradise, that He would 

* O, mother! praying God would save 
Thy sailor, while thy head is bowed, 
" His heavy-shotted hammock shroud, 
Drops in his vast and wandering grave." 

Tennyson's " In Memoriam." 
In Kingsley's " Two Years Ago" the heroine, standing on the seashore and 
looking at the wrecked corpses, muses thus, " Strange that it was a duty to pray 
for them yesterday, and it is a sin to pray for them to-day-" 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 113 

shorten the time of their waiting. There is a strange 
hint in the Book of Revelation, of some pious souls, 
who have suffered much in this world, actually be- 
coming uneasy and impatient, at the delay of their 
triumph. They are described as being "under the 
altar," not a place surely, indicative of final and 
completed happiness. "And when he had opened 
the fifth seal I saw, under the altar, the souls of 
them that were slain for the word of God, and for 
the testimony which they held. And they cried 
with a loud voice, saying, How long, O L,ord, Holy 
and True, dost Thou not judge and avenge our 
blood on them that dwell on the earth ? And white 
robes were given unto every one of them ; and it 
was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a 
little season, until their fellow-servants also, and 
their brethren, that should be killed as they were 
should be fulfilled" (Rev. vi: 9-11). 

This imagery surely represents the martyrs as by 
no means perfect : for they are crying out for ven- 
geance on their earthly enemies, having therefore a 
very important lesson yet to learn ; by no means 
sharing the prayer of dying Stephen, "Lord, lay 
not this sin to their charge," dissatisfied with their 
present condition, and comforted and pacified by 
God, by the gift of white robes. (Since writing 
these words, I have listened to a grand interpreta- 
tion of Hamlet. It is worthy of notice, that when 



1 1.4 THE LIFE TO COME. 

the Ghost of Hamlet's father appears, the prominent 
thought of the revenant is revenge upon his murder- 
ous brother.) The sound of "Thy Kingdom 
Come," wafted to them from their brethren on 
earth, is surely the most welcome message that can 
reach their ears. It is singular, that in the Kad- 
disch of the Rabbis, or prayers for the soul of the 
deceased, occur the words, "May His kingdom 
come quickly." 

As the Lord's Prayer is the seed of all prayers, 
this petition is surely neglected, if it is not ex- 
panded into prayers for the departed. What has been 
said by us of some of the views maintained in this 
book, namely, that they are not less, but more sol- 
emn than those which have passed current, is 
eminently true of this point. "The whole tone 
of the prayers of the earlier burial office presents 
a marked contrast, in its trembling humility, its 
blended tone of hope and fear, to the almost 
unmingled confidence and assurance of that which 
has been in use in the English Church since 

1552." 

Consider the variety of characters, over whom we 
are, I suppose, obliged to read this service ! and 
contrast it with such a prayer as this: 

11 O God, we humbly beseech Thee, whatever this, 
Thy servant, may have contracted of evil, contrary 
to Thy will, by the deceit of the devil, or his own 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 1 15 

iniquity and frailness, Thou, in Thy pity and com- 
passion, wouldst wash away by Thy clemency, and 
command that his soul may be borne by the hands 
of Thy holy angels, where grief and sorrow and 
sighing flee away, and the souls of the faithful are 
in joy and felicity;" or, take this: "Do Thou 
now look upon this Thy servant, whom thou 
hast chosen and received into another state, and 
forgive him, if voluntarily or involuntarily he has 
sinned." 

"Here also," says Dean Plumptre, "the argu- 
ment from the universality of the practice, to its 
primitive antiquity is absolutely irresistible. . If 
the Liturgies of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, 
Rome, Carthage, Gaul, agreed in this respect ; if 
there was no difference between the Orthodox and 
the Heretics, as regards these prayers, we cannot 
avoid the conclusion that they must have been 
found in the original type of Liturgy, of which all 
these were, each with special variation, natural 
developments, and which can hardly be assigned to 
a later period than the age of the Apostles, or that 
which immediately succeeded it. 

I cannot resist adding these words of Mr. Cham- 
bers (p. 83), " Is any reader shocked at the mention 
of prayers for the dead ? They are not prayers for 
the dead, but prayers for the living ; for has not our 
Lord said, 'All live unto God ?' . . . Can there 



Il6 THE LIFE TO COME. 

be found one passage in God's word, which says 
that we must not pray for our dear ones, when once 
they have been separated from us ? 

What an inexpressible sadness there is in the false 
idea that it is wrong to utter such prayers. 

Up to the moment of death, we may plead ever 
so earnestly with our Heavenly Father for a dear 
one and an instant later we must not. What an 
inconsistency, when we profess to believe that 
that one is still living, and has but changed his 
locality. 

On the other hand, what an immeasurable conso- 
lation and mitigation of the pang of separation is 
it, if we think our prayers may go with and follow 
him into the intermediate life. 

I know of nothing that will make that life so 
much a reality to us, and which will bring home 
to our mind the truth, that there will be reunion and 
recognition there, as this remembrance of the 
departed at the throne of Grace. Instead of the 
bond which has hitherto existed between us and 
them being rudely snapped asunder by death, such 
prayer does but strengthen it, by associating it the 
more closely with God. And instead of the former 
love and sympathy between us resolving themselves 
into fading memories connected with a receding 
past, both are preserved, and gather intensity as 
the time of reunion approaches While 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 117 

that truth bridges, as nothing else can do, the 
terrible gulf of separation ; and so becomes one of 
the grandest of influences for diverting our gaze 
from things temporal, and fixing it upon things 
eternal. 

What a chilling vacuum this is in our religion, if, 
when once the breath has left the|body, supplications 
must cease. 

How contrary to the dictates of charity, if accord- 
ing to some, we may only pray for the "faithful 
departed." 

Thus far Mr. Chambers. There is a trio often 
joined together, as approving of prayers for the 
departed. They are Luther, Dr. Johnson and 
Bishop Heber. In regard to Mr. Chambers' last 
point, namely, the inclusiveness of prayers for the 
dead, it may be well to quote Bishop Heber. He 
speaks of prayer for departed friends as ' ' neither 
unpleasing nor unavailing." "The earlier Chris- 
tians, most of them, believed that the condition of 
such persons {both classes of souls in Hades) might 
be made better and a milder sentence be obtained 
for their errors and infirmities from the Almighty 
Judge, by whom the doom of all creatures shall be 
finally settled." 

It may be asked, "What shall we pray for, on 
behalf of the departed ? ' ' When we understand the 
mystery of prayer for the living, we may hope to 



Il8 THE LIFE TO COME. 

comprehend that of prayer for the departed. * ' Pour 
out your hearts before Him," whatever be the 
subject : I answer in the words of S. Paul, "In 
everything by prayer and supplication with thanks- 
giving, let your requests be made known to 
God." 

And we have good reason to believe that the word 
"thanksgiving," eucharist, was a veiled way of 
speaking of the Sacrament of the Altar. It would 
be at once understood by those initiated in the 
Holy Mysteries, but would be dark to those outside, 
and if these letters fell into the hands of the heathen, 
it would prevent pearls being cast before swine. If 
this be so, it is a strong endorsement of Eucharistic 
prayer. Says S. Paul, " Likewise the spirit also 
helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we 
should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself 
maketh intercession for us with groanings which 
cannot be uttered." (Rom. viii : 26.) 

While we dislike the system of "proof texts," it 
is hard always to avoid it. And there may be 
quoted on the other side 1 S. John, v: 16-17 : " If 
any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto 
death he shall ask, and He shall give him life for 
them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto 
death. I do not say that he shall pray for it. All 
unrighteousness is sin ; and there is a sin not unto 
death." 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. Iig 

Now this does not mean that death draws a line, 
on one side of which it is lawful to pray for the 
sinner, and on the other not. I have tried to 
emphasize the fact that it is possible, by a course of 
sin, so to harden the soul before death as to make 
salvation, humanly speaking, impossible. It is sin 
unto death— in close proximity with death. But 
more than this, S. John uses a different word from 
that which is rendered "he shall ask," when he 
says " I do not say that he shall pray for it." In 
the former case it is Our Lord's word, when He says, 
" Ask and it shall be given you." But in the latter 
it is, "I do not say that he shall e7iquire or ask 
questions concerning this." We cannot possibly be 
certain that the object of our prayers has committed 
this sin, therefore he delicately hints, " You had bet- 
ter leave it out of the account. Ask no questions 
about it ; pray without reference to it." His language 
is singularly guarded, and thus explained, we see 
why it is guarded. Thus understood, his direction 
has reference to the living, as well as to the 
dead. 

Hear the Puritan Milton, untheologically follow- 
ing a natural instinct, in an ode on the death of a 

lady : 

" Gentle lady, may thy grave 

Peace and quiet ever have, 

After this life of travel sore, 

Sweet rest seize thee, evermore," 



120 THE LIFE TO COME. 

And I add this poem, which I think will go to 
the heart of some reader : 

BEYOND. 
I have a friend, I cannot tell just where, 
For out of sight, and hearing he has gone ; 
Yet now, as once, I breathe for him a prayer, 
Although his name is carved upon a stone. 

O blessed habit of the lips and heart, 
Not to be broken by the night of death, 
A soul beyond seems how less far apart 
If daily named to God with fervid breath. 

If one doth rest in God, we well may think 
He ever hears the prayers we pray for him, . 
Our Father — let us keep the sacred link ; 
The hand of Prayer love's holy lamp doth trim. 

Were the dear dead one, heedless of God's will, 
Needing our pra3 T ers that he might be forgiven 
Against all creeds, that prayer uprises still 
With the dim trust of pardon and of heaven. 

In many instances, the dead are not only out of 
sight, but out of mind. The phrase, " A month's 
mind," "a year's mind" that is, reminder, has a 
deep meaning. 

Even if we take the strictest view of probation 
ceasing at death, we may ask this question : If a 
son, after years of opportunity of study, has gone in 
to pass a final examination, whose result is to 
make or mar his life, when would, or could, his 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 121 

father possibly put up more earnest prayers on his 
behalf, that he might stand the ordeal, than just at 
the very moment when probation was over and 
judgment was at hand ? 

There was in the first Prayer Book of Edward 
VI. an order for the celebration of the Holy Com- 
munion at the burial of the dead. The Introit was 
Ps. xlii. The collect was, "O Merciful God, the 
Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ' ' (which is still called 
the collect in the English "Burial office). The 
Epistle was I Thes. iv : 13-18. The Holy Gospel 
was S. John vi : 37-40. All students of the re- 
vision which produced the present English Prayer 
Book, know what high authority Bishop Cosin is, 
and I quote him: "It would be known why this 
prayer is named the Collect more than the rest. The 
Collect is to go before the Epistle and Gospel, and 
then the Communion, or the Sacrifice of the Church, 
is to follow. Thus it was appointed in King 
Edward's service (before Calvin's letter to the 
sacrilegious Duke of Somerset got it yielded) that 
there should be a celebration of the Sacrament at 
the burial of the dead. And the name of the Collect 
standing still, with such reference thereunto, I 
know no reason but that we might take the advan- 
tage, and to show that our church is not to be ruled 
by Calvin, use the old custom still, and after the 
burial of any] man, go to the Sacrament, since, it 



122 THE LIFE TO COME. 

was the ancient order 'of all Christians so to do. 
Whether it were to confirm Christians the better, in 
hope of our certain resurrection after death, signified 
by that Sacrament, or to offer up the Sacrifice of 
the Church unto God, to apply the effect of Christ's 
sacrifice]unto the party deceased, for his resurrection 
again at the last day, and receiving his perfect con- 
summation both of soul and body, in the Kingdom 
of Heaven, as in the prayer before, which, but for 
the virtue of Christ's death, nor he that is dead, 
nor he that is alive, can have any hope to enjoy.* 
I will quote the sentence immediately following 
that already given from Dean Church : " And so, 
with the interpretation of the ' Sacrifice of Masses.' 
It was the fashion to see in this the condemnation 
of all doctrine of a sacrifice in the Eucharist, and 
when Mr. Newman confined the phrase to the gross 
abuses connected with the mass, this was treated as 
an affront to common sense and honesty. Since 
then, we have become better acquainted with the 
language of the ancient Liturgies, and no instructed 
theologian would now venture to treat Mr. Newman's 
distinction as idle. There was in fact nothing new 
in his distinctions on these two points. They had 
already been made in two of the preceding tracts, 
the reprints of Archbishop Usher on Prayer for the 
Dead, and the catena on the Eucharistic sacrifice 



*See note at the end of chapier. 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 1 23 

and in both cases the distinctions were supported by 
a great mass of Anglican authority." 

It was natural, and inevitable that there should 
be a reactionary wave at the Reformation, and that 
it should entail this loss, but — what a loss ! At the 
General Convention of 1889, one of the Liturgical 
Improvements proposed by the House of Bishops, 
and sent down by them to the House of Deputies, 
was the restoration of this identical altar service for 
the Burial of the Dead, excepting that Ps. xxiii, 
"The Lord is my shepherd," was substituted as 
the Introit. The clerical vote by dioceses was 34 
for ; 14 against, with 3 divided. The lay vote was 
18 for, 18 against, with 6 divided. Previous to the 
vote being taken a Collect was prepared in place of 
the old one. So, by the non-concurrence of the 
laity the matter was dropped, the House of Bishops 
not asking, as they did in many cases of disagree- 
ment, for a committee of conference. 

But, in that future review of the Prayer Book, 
which certainly not the writer, nor many of his 
readers, will live to see, it will be taken up again, 
with a different fate. 

10. Thoughtful men, such as Paley and Isaac 
Taylor, have remarked on the fact, that Our Lord 
predicts that mankind at the last shall be divided 
morally into two and only two classes. He includes 
all under the wheat and the tares, the good fishes 



124 TH E LIFE TO COME. 

and the bad, the sheep and the goats. There is no 
shading off. A sharp line is drawn, and all are 
either on one side or the other. So, in the Book of 
Kings, they are divided into those that did evil and 
those that did good or right in the sight'of the Lord, 
there is no middle or neutral zone. Such thinkers 
ask, How shall we reconcile the fact that there shall 
be at the last, two and only two divisions of man- 
kind, with the mixture of good and evil we con- 
stantly meet in the same man? S. Paul does indeed 
assure us, that justice shall be done to the good and 
bad, that is in every man. " For we must all appear 
before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one 
may receive the things done in his body, according 
to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad" 
(2 Cor. v : 10) But he does not tell us how it shall 
be done. 

The truth is, we judge only by outward actions, 
by doing ; but God penetrates below this, to being. 
Mere actions are far from an unerring test of charac- 
ter. As the Germans speak of a Tendenz- Schrift , or 
writing with a drift, so the life of each man, in 
spite of apparent inconsistencies, we may believe, 
has this drift upward or downward. 

11. Our Lord has given us hints of the ground of 
condemnation at the Last Day, few but significant: 
1 ' Depart from me all ye that work iniquity. I know 
you not." "I am ashamed of you." In other 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 1 25 

words, it is moral unlikeness to Him, and conse- 
quent antipathy on His part, which will ensure 
rejection. 

12. We find in Scripture an exact adaptation of 
punishment to sin, which shows how accurately it 
is adjusted. Thus, in Hosea viii : n, "Because 
Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, altars 
shall be unto him to sin." That is, he has built 
many idol altars in his own land; he shall be carried 
captive into Assyria, where he shall have ample 
scope for his idolatry. There are two striking 
instances of this in the New Testament, although 
they are concealed by the authorized version. In 
Romans i : 28, " Because they refused '(ova edodfiaaav) 
to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them 
over to a refuse (addntfiov') mind." The other is i Cor. 
iii : 17, " If any man destroy (<bOelpei) the temple of 
God, him shall God destroy " (00e/t>e/). 

13. In considering any work, its paramount 
object should never be lost sight of. Now, the 
object of the Gospel is, not the damnatio?i } but the 
salvation of men. It may seem a truism to state 
this, but it will not appear to be such, when we 
consider the views which have been held. There- 
fore, as long as there is salvability in a man, we 
trust that he is not shut out from salvation, and 
God is the only judge when that salvability ceases 
here or there. 



126 THE LIFE TO COME. 

14. It has been a reproach brought by the advo- 
cates of the Larger Hope against the sterner school, 
and not without reason, that the latter bring into 
the strongest light those passages of Scripture, 
which make for their side, and either pass over in 
silence or explain away, those that tell against 
them. 

For instance, what Our Lord says about the ser- 
vants who shall be beaten with many or few stripes, 
in proportion to their knowledge or ignorance, does 
not teach that any shall be beaten with ttnending 
stripes, but rather implies the reverse. Many im- 
plies an end, however far off that end may be. Yet 
these words have been held by Bishop Wordsworth 
to teach different degrees of endless misery. Whereas 
this is precisely what it does not teach. The con- 
trast is not one of quality, or degree, but of number. 

15. The instance which follows is my contri- 
bution to that opening up the meaning of passages 
of Scripture by individuals, of which Bishop 
Butler speaks. 

How many sermons have been preached on the 
text, ' ' Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone' ' 
(Hosea iv : 17), taking the ground that Ephraim 
was finally forsaken and abandoned, entirely over- 
looking the fact that almost the last words of the 
book are (xiv : 8) " Ephraim shall say, what have 
I to do any more with idols. I have heard Him, 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 127 

and observed Him; I am like a green fir tree. From 
me is Thy fruit found. ' ' 

16. The ultimate idea — the last analysis — of salva- 
tion, is, that it is deliverence from sin itself. 
"Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall 
save His people from their sins" (S. Matt, i: 

21). 

My task — not an easy one — is done. If any word 
has been spoken that is not true, may God annul it. 
If what has been said is His truth, may He impress 
it. S. Paul's consolation is mine : " For we can do 
(accomplish) nothing against the truth, but for the 
truth." 

Note. — Since writing I have read a notice from a 
well-known pen, of the lectures of Dr. Denny, a 
Presbyterian divine. I quote from it : " Real 
prayer for the dead, i. e. , intercessory, as distinct from 
commendatory prayer, he thinks un scriptural, and 
to be also deprecated as unreal, on the striking 
ground, that prayer is not real, unless it is the so.ul 
of effort ; we do not truly intercede for a man, 
unless we put ourselves at God's disposal, for that 
man's service, undertake to plead with him, love 
him and help him. When death puts him beyond 
our reach, the time for intercession comes to an 
end, with the possibility of active ministration to 
him." 



128 THE LIFE TO COME. 

Every fallacy is "striking," and this one very 
striking indeed. 

For ist, the distinction between intercessory and 
commendatory prayer is unreal. They are in- 
deed convertible terms. Take the commendatory 
prayer in the office for the Visitation of the Sick. 
" We humbly commend the soul of this Thy 
servant .... into Thy hands, as into 
the hands of a faithful Creator, and most merci- 
ful Saviour, beseeching Thee that it may be 
precious in Thy sight." Is not this an intercessory 
prayer ? 

2. While it is true that prayer without action, 
where action "can be had," is unreal; — as the 
prayer for the success of miss : ons by one who will 
not give to them — it is also true that there are 
many cases in which prayer for the living can- 
not be accompanied with effort for the object 
of that prayer. For instance, Prayer for those 
at Sea. We have no control of the vessel, winds, 
currents, officers or crew. Yet we pray. When 
President Garfield was hanging between life 
and death, prayer went up through the whole 
land for his recovery, on the part of those who 
could not minister to him, nor do him personal 
service. 

3. The case of Elijah is given by S. James as an 
illustration of the effect of prayer, pure and simple, 



PROPOSITIONS OR CONCLUSIONS. 1 29 

the energized prayer of a righteous man (v : 17, 
18). When S. Peter was delivered from prison 
(Acts xii : 5-11), it is stated " Peter, therefore, was 
kept in prison, but prayer was made without ceasing 
of the Church unto God for him." And S. Paul 
writing to Philemon says, " But withal prepare me 
also a lodging, for I trust that through your prayers 
I shall be given unto you" (Phil, v: 22). Yet 
neither the Church at Jerusalem nor Philemon 
could do anything to open the door of the prison in 
which the apostle was confined. 

It is not every Christian minister who commends 
the departing soul into the hands of a "faithful 
Creator and most merciful Saviour." We may 
notice also the expression "that whatsoever defile- 
ments it may have contracted — being purged and 
done away, it may be presented pure and without 
spot before Thee." 

This prayer stands on the boundary line between 
two worlds. Its outlook is to the world beyond. 

Note to pagk 47. — I do not forget the profound 
wisdom of Kcclesiastes ; nor its maxims of religion 
and morality. And the close of it passes into " the 
better temper, which sees in doing good as far as in 
our power, the golden rule of life." But the key- 
note is given by the opening words: " Vanity of 

vanities saith the Preacher, all is vanity." Its 
9 






130 THE LIFE TO COME. 

religion is the religion of reformed Solomon, when 
he turned from idolatry, polygamy, and sensuality : 
not of the young and tender lad, to whom God 
appeared in Gibeon by night. Viewed in this light, 
I repeat, no lesson can be more solemn than that 
which the Book teaches. 



THE END. 






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